The Time Machine..............................................................................................................................................1

H.G. Wells...............................................................................................................................................1

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.

His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned

brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed

and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be

sat upon, and there was that luxurious afterdinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the

trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this waymarking the points with a lean forefingeras we sat

and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.

`You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally

accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'

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

`I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much

as I need from you. You know of course that 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.'

`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'

Filby became pensive. `Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, `any real body must have extension in FOUR

directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, andDuration. But through a natural infirmity of the

flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four

dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency

to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our

consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our

`That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; `that . . . very

`Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,' continued the Time Traveller, with a slight

accession of cheerfulness. `Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who

talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time.

SPACE EXCEPT THAT OUR CONSCIOUSNESS MOVES ALONG IT. But some foolish people have got

hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?'

`It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which

one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at

right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why THREE dimensions

particularlywhy not another direction at right angles to the other three?and have even tried to construct

a FourDimension 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 threedimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models

of thee dimensions they could represent one of fourif 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

`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 twentythree, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were,

ThreeDimensional representations of his FourDimensioned 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 traced such a line, and that

`But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, `if Time is really only a fourth dimension of

Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in

The Time Traveller smiled. `Are you sure we can move freely in Space? Right and left we can go, backward

and forward freely enough, and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions. But

`But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom

of vertical movement.' `Still they could move a little up and down,' said the Medical Man.

`And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.'

`My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are

always getting away from the present movement. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no

dimensions, are passing along the TimeDimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just

as we should travel DOWN if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.'

`But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the Psychologist. `You CAN move about in all directions of

`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

absentminded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any

length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized

man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why

should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the TimeDimension,

`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

`That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver determines.'

`It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the Psychologist suggested. `One might travel back and

`Don't you think you would attract attention?' said the Medical Man. `Our ancestors had no great tolerance for

`One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,' the Very Young Man thought.

`In which case they would certainly plough you for the Littlego. The German scholars have improved Greek

`Then there is the future,' said the Very Young Man. `Just think! One might invest all one's money, leave it to

`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

`Some sleightofhand 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

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 followsunless his explanation is to be acceptedis 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

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 armchair nearest the fire,

and I drew this forward so as to be almost between the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him,

looking over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right,

the Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the alert.

It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. `Well?' said the Psychologist.

`This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together

above the apparatus, `is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will notice that

it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in

some way unreal.' He pointed to the part with his finger. `Also, here is one little white lever, and here is

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. `It's beautifully made,' he said.

`It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we had all imitated the action of the

Medical Man, he said: `Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the

machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time

traveller. Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future

Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to speak to 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 gonevanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.

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

We stared at each other. `Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously

`Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to

look at the Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a

cigar and tried to light it uncut.) `What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'he indicated

the laboratory`and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on my own account.'

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. `It must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,'

`Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it would still be here all

`But,' I said, `If it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room; and

`Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of impartiality, turning towards the Time

`Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: `You think. You can explain that. It's

`Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. `That's a simple point of psychology. I should have

thought of it. It's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate

this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is

travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we

get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only onefiftieth or onehundredth of what it

would make if it were not travelling in time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in

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

`It sounds plausible enough tonight,' said the Medical Man; 'but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common

`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 tricklike that ghost you showed

`Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, `I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly.

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was

one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always

suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the

model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown HIM far less

scepticism. For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time

Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would have

made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The

serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that

trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don't

think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next,

though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical

incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested. For my own part,

I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man,

whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable

stress on the blowing out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to RichmondI suppose I was one of the Time Traveller's most constant

guestsand, arriving late, found four or five men already assembled in his drawingroom. 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 halfpast seven now,' said the Medical Man. `I suppose we'd better have

`You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this note to lead off with dinner

`It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the Editor of a wellknown daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor

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 anothera quiet, shy man

with a beardwhom 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 dinnertable about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested

time travelling, in a halfjocular 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

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair

disordered, and as it seemed to me greyereither with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually faded.

His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on ita cut half healed; his expression was haggard and

drawn, as by intense suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the

light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a

glass of champagne, and pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked

round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face. `What on earth have you been up to,

man?' said the Doctor. The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. `Don't let me disturb you,' he said, with a

certain faltering articulation. `I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a

draught. `That's good,' he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his cheeks. His glance

flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room.

Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. `I'm going to wash and dress, and then

I'll come down and explain things. . . Save me some of that mutton. I'm starving for a bit of meat.'

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. The Editor began a

question. `Tell you presently,' said the Time Traveller. `I'mfunny! Be all right in a minute.'

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 bloodstained 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

woolgathering. Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor say, thinking (after

his wont) in headlines. And this brought my attention back to the bright dinnertable.

`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

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the bellthe Time

Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinnerfor 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 clothesbrushes in the Future? The Journalist

too, would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole

thing. They were both the new kind of journalistvery joyous, irreverent young men. `Our Special

Correspondent in the Day after Tomorrow reports,' the Journalist was sayingor rather shoutingwhen

the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard

`I say,' said the Editor hilariously, `these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next

week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?'

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word. He smiled quietly, in his old way.

`Where's my mutton?' he said. `What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'

`Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller. `I want something to eat. I won't say a word until I get some

`I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the Editor. The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards

the Silent Man and rang it with his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his face,

started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part,

sudden questions kept on rising to my lips, 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 smokingroom. 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 easychair

`I can't argue tonight. 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 trueevery 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

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

as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more

animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink and, above

all, my own inadequacyto express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot

see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice.

You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for

the candles in the smokingroom had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the

Silent Man from the knees downward were illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other.

After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.

`I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing

itself, incomplete in the workshop. There it is now, a little travelworn, truly; and one of the ivory bars is

cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on

Friday, when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch

too short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten

o'clock today that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws

again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds

a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever

in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed

to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had

anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A

moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly halfpast 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 tomorrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then

fainter and ever fainter. Tomorrow 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 switchbackof 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 slowest snail that ever crawled dashed

by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then,

in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had

a faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and

day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous

color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a

fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in

`The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon which this house now stands, and the

shoulder rose above me grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown,

now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass

like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed changedmelting and flowing under my eyes. The little

hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt

swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a

year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was

`The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They merged at last into a kind of hysterical

exhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account. But my

mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into

futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But

presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my minda certain curiosity and therewith a certain

dreaduntil at last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what

wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look

nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid

architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of

glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the hillside, 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

`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,

attenuatedwas 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 reactionpossibly a

farreaching explosion would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible

dimensionsinto 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 strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of

prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of

petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the

`There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail

was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still seemed

grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what

seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve

and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones. The rebounding,

dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was

wet to the skin. "Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you."

`Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved

apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour.

`My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more

distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birchtree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape

something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so

that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It

chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a

smile on the lips. It was greatly weatherworn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood

looking at it for a little spacehalf 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 oldworld savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common

`Already I saw other vast shapeshuge 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 their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt

as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew to

frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine.

It gave under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One hand on the saddle, the

`But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I looked more curiously and less fearfully

at this world of the remote future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group

of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

`Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads and

shoulders of men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I

stood with my machine. He was a slight creatureperhaps four feet highclad in a purple tunic, girdled at

the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or buskinsI could not clearly distinguish whichwere on his feet; his

legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air

`He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed face

reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptivethat hectic beauty of which we used to hear so

much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine.

`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

`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 confidencea 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 ninepins.

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

`And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresdenchina

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. The eyes were large and mild;

andthis may seem egotism on my partI fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might

`As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speaking in soft

cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then

hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in

chequered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

`For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The question had come

into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I had

always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in

front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to

be on the intellectual level of one of our fiveyearold children asked me, in fact, if I had come from the

sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and

fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the

`I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They

all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful

flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with melodious applause; and

presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly 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

`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

`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 weatherworn. Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we

entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenthcentury garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers,

and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, softcolored robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious

`The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof was in shadow, and the

windows, partially glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The floor

was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabsblocks, and it was so much

worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more

frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised

perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognized as a kind of

`Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my conductors seated themselves,

signing for me to do likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands,

flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to

follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.

`And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stainedglass windows, which

displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower

end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the marble table near me was fractured.

Nevertheless, the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of

hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching

me with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same soft and yet

`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 therea floury thing in a threesided husk

was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the

`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

fairhaired 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 was slow work, and the little people soon tired and

wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons

in little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met

`A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest. They would come

to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop examining me

and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the

first time that almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came

to disregard these little people. I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger

was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little

distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to

`The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the scene was lit by the warm

glow of the setting sun. At first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different from the

world I had knowneven the flowers. The big building I had left was situated on the slope of a broad river

valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to the summit

of a crest perhaps a mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year

Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the

`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 worldfor 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 pagodalike plantsnettles possiblybut

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 experiencethe first intimation of a still stranger discoverybut of that I

`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 palacelike buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such

`And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the halfdozen 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 to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged, then, that the children of

that time were extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification of my

`Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes

was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of

the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force;

where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the

State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessityindeed there is no

necessityfor an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs

disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete.

This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the

`While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like a well

under a cupola. I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the

thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking

powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of

`There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish

rust and half smothered in soft moss, the armrests cast and filed into the resemblance of griffins' heads. I sat

down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet

and fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below 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

`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 halftruthor

`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 lifethe true

civilizing process that makes life more and more securehad 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

`After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our

time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations

very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and

cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they

can. We improve our favourite plants and animals and how few they aregradually by selective breeding;

now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient

breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is

very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better

organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be

intelligent, educated, and cooperating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.

In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable me to suit our human

`This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all Time, in the space of Time

across which my machine had leaped. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere

were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of

preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious

diseases during all my stay. And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and

`Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and

as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical

struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was

gone. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The difficulty

of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

`But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. What, unless biological

science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: 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 selfrestraint, patience, and decision. And the

institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring,

parental selfdevotion, 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

`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

`Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would

become weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a

constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great helpmay even

be hindrancesto a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well

as physical, would be out of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary

violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil.

For such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are indeed no longer weak.

Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet.

No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome of the last surgings of the now

purposeless energy of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it

livedthe flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in

`Even this artistic impetus would at last die awayhad almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves

with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more. Even that

would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity,

`As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I had mastered the problem of

the world mastered the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had devised for the

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 enoughas

`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 northeast. 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

`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

`But it WAS the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as

`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 great leaping strides

down the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up

and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself: "They

have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way." Nevertheless, I ran with all my might. All

the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly,

knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. My breath came with pain. I suppose I

covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am

not a young man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath

thereby. I cried aloud, and none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.

`When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint

and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as if the

thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me

towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon. It

`I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me,

had I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the sense of

some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing

I felt assured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in

time. The attachment of the leversI will show you the method later prevented any one from tampering

with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved, and was hid, only in space. But then, where could

`I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes

all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer. I

remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and

bleeding from the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the great

building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one

of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains, of which I

`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,

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

across the big dininghall again, out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet running

and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was

the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kinda strange

animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a

memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this impossible place and

that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying

on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I

slept, and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf

`I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had got there, and why I had such a

profound sense of desertion and despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable

daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I

could reason with myself. "Suppose the worst?" I said. "Suppose the machine altogether lostperhaps

destroyed? It behooves me to be calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the

method of my loss, and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make

another." That would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it was a beautiful and

`But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient, find its hidingplace,

and recover it by force or cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about me, wondering

where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travelsoiled. 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

`I saw the heads of two orangeclad people coming through the bushes and under some blossomcovered

appletrees towards me. I turned smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then, pointing to

the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open it. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved

very oddly. I don't know how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were to use a grossly improper

gesture to a delicateminded womanit is how she would look. They went off as if they had received the

last possible insult. I tried a sweetlooking little chap in white next, with exactly the same result. Somehow,

his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and I tried him

once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. In three strides I was after him,

had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw

`But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard something stir

insideto be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like a chucklebut I must have been mistaken. Then I got a

big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the

verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people must have heard me hammering in gusty

outbreaks a mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking

furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am

too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twentyfour

`I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said

I to myself. "If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your

machine away, it's little good 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.

`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 simplealmost 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,

you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

`So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames valley. From every

hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and style, the

same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossomladen trees and treeferns. Here and there water

shone like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the

sky. A peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells,

several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during

my first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little cupola

from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could see no

gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain

sound: a thudthudthud, like the beating of some big engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my

matches, that a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of

one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight.

`After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for

above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sunscorched beach.

Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation,

whose true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus

`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 organization, I fear I can convey

`In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs.

But it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range

of my explorings. This, again, was a question I deliberately 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, which

`I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent

humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big

palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dininghalls and sleeping apartments. I could find no

machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times

need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow

such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no

shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing gently, in

bathing in the river, in making love in a halfplayful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how

`Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had taken it into the hollow pedestal of

the White Sphinx. Why? For the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those flickering

pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felthow shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here

and there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even,

absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and

`That day, too, I made a friendof a sort. It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people

bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current

ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a 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,

`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

`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 said to

myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was very great,

her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as

comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I thought it was mere

childish affection that made her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted

upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely

seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature

presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I

would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.

`It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough in the

daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening

grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black

things. Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me

thinking and observing. I discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great

houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of

apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still

such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping

`It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our

acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips

away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the night before her rescue that I was awakened about

dawn. I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were

feeling over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish

animal had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It

was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear

cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the

`The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly

halflight. 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. There several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I

fancied I saw a solitary white, apelike 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, earlymorning 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 have been ghosts," I said; "I wonder whence they dated." For a queer

notion of Grant Allen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and leave ghosts, he

argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable

some Eight Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the jest was

unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my

head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my first passionate

search for the Time Machine. But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined

`I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for

it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the sun will go on

cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin,

forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur,

the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever

`Well, one very hot morningmy fourth, I thinkas I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a

colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among

these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen

masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered

it groping, for the 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

`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 illcontrolled. 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 apelike 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

greyishred 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 allfours, 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 welllike 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 a human spider! It was clambering down the

wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down

the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had

`I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for some time that I could succeed in

persuading myself that the thing I had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had

not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the

Upperworld were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal

`I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their

true import. And what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization?

How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upperworlders? And what was hidden down

there, at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was

nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely

afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upperworld people came running in their amorous sport

across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.

`They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well. Apparently

it was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for 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

longcontinued underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached look common in most animals

that live largely in the darkthe 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 lightall reinforced the theory of an extreme

`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 slopeseverywhere, in fact except

along the river valley showed how universal were its ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume

that it was in this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race

was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how of this

splitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for myself, I

`At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual

widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was

the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to youand wildly incredible!and

yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground

space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for

instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are underground workrooms and

restaurants, and they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had

gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger

underground factories, spending a stillincreasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end! Even now,

does not an Eastend worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural

`Again, the exclusive tendency of richer peopledue, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their

education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor is already leading to the

closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance,

perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulfwhich 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 richwill 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 Havenots, 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

`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 cooperation 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 today. Its

triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellowman. This, I

must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books.

My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on this

supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was

now far fallen into decay. The tooperfect security of the Upperworlders had led them to a slow movement

of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. That I could see clearly enough

already. What had happened to the Undergrounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the

Morlocksthat, by the by, was the name by which these creatures were calledI could imagine that the

modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the "Eloi," the beautiful race that I

`Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine? For I felt sure it was they

who had taken it. Why, too, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why

were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this

Underworld, but here again I was disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and

presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic was unendurable. And when I pressed

her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that

Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only concerned in

banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes. And very soon she was smiling and

`It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the newfound clue in what was

manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the

halfbleached 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

`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

moonlightthat night Weena was among themand 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 southwestward towards the rising country that is now called Combe Wood, I

observed far off, in the direction of nineteenthcentury Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character

from any I had hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had

an Oriental look: the face of it having the lustre, as well as the palegreen tint, a kind of bluishgreen, of a

certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested a difference in use, and I was minded to

push on and explore. But the day was growing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after a long

and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and I returned to the

welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity

regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of selfdeception, to enable me to shirk, by another day,

an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in

`Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and

look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. "Goodbye, Little Weena," I said, kissing her; and then

putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well

confess, for I feared my courage might leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a

most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition

nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in the

throat of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look

`I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by means of metallic

bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller

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

`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

`I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the darkness I

snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had

seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me

impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal

fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless

obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match

in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes

`I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the Overworld

people; so that I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration was

even then in my mind. But I said to myself, "You are in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I

found the noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open

space, and striking another match, saw that I had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter

darkness beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a

`Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque

black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the by, was very

stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central

vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were

carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the

red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures

lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! Then the match burned down,

`I have thought since how particularly illequipped 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 smokeat times I missed tobacco frightfullyeven 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

withhands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safetymatches 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

Upperworlders, 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 indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realization of my

ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. I shouted at

them as loudly as I could. They started away, and then I could feel them approaching me again. They

clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently, and shouted again

rather discordantly. This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as

they came back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another match and

escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my

pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown

out and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the

`In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me

back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly

inhuman they lookedthose pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkishgrey eyes!as they stared in

their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my

second match had ended, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening into the

shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for

the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged

backward. I lit my last match . . . and it incontinently went out. But I had my hand on the climbing bars now,

and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering

up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for

`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

wellmouth 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

`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 Morlocksa something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed

them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to

get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon.

`The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had put this into my

head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult

problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there

was a longer interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear

of the little Upperworld people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the

Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The

Upperworld people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical

servants: but that had long since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man

were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like the

Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since

the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface

intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs,

perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse paws with his foot, or

as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the

organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was

creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease

and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one

old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head the

memory of the meat I had seen in the Underworld. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up

as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall

the form of it. I had a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the time.

`Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted.

I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not paralyse and mystery

has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms

and a fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of

that confidence I had lost in 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

`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 southwest. 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 solethey were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoorsso 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

`Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she desired me to let her

down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my

pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric

kind of vase for floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose. And that reminds me! In

The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike

`As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon,

Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of

the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that we were seeking a refuge

there from her Fear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze

stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear,

remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the expectation took

the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could

even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on

their anthill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would

receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine?

`So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The clear blue of the distance faded, and

one star after another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears and her fatigue grew

upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she

put her arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went

down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I waded, and

went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and by a statuea 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 tiredmy feet, in particular, were very soreI

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 dangera danger I did not care to let my imagination loose uponthere

would still be all the roots to stumble over and the treeboles 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

`Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to

wait for the moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now

and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of

friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow

movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in

unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of stardust

as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more

splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone

`Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of

their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into

the unknown future. I thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty

times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few

revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures,

aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were

these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror.

Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden

shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at

little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the

`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

`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 LongAgo 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 wasfar less than any monkey. His

prejudice against human flesh is no deepseated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men! I tried to

look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal

ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a

torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the antlike

Morlocks preserved and preyed uponprobably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my

`Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous

punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his

fellowman, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had

come home to him. I even tried a Carlylelike scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of

mind was impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human

form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear.

`I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of

refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was immediate. In

the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for

nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance

to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion

that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should discover the Time Machine and

escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to

bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the

`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 northeastward

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 thenthough I never followed up the thoughtof what might

`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,

`Within the big valves of the doorwhich were open and brokenwe 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

rainwater had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery

was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the

side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar

glass cases of our own time. But they must have been airtight to judge from the fair preservation of some of

`Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latterday South Kensington! Here, apparently, was the

Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process

of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost

ninetynine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at

work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils

broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily

removedby the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps.

Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about

`And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age, that I gave no thought

to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my

`To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery

of Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in my present

circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of oldtime 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

saltpeter; 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 illlit, the floor of it running downward at a slight

angle from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the ceilingmany of them

cracked and smashedwhich suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in

my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and

many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I

was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I

could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I

should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

`Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she startled me. Had it not been for her I do

not think I should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may be, of course, that

the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.ED.] The end I had come in at

was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slitlike windows. As you went down the length, the ground

came up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a London house before each,

and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been

too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions

drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as

I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away towards the

dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate

presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of

machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no weapon,

no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a

`I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine from which

projected a lever not unlike those in a signalbox. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my

hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to

whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and I

rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter.

And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's

own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my

disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time

Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard.

`Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger

one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and

charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently 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

`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 her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed against

the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to

Weena's huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling THE LAND OF THE

LEAL as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest CANCAN, in part a step dance, in part a skirtdance

(so far as my tailcoat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally inventive, as you know.

`Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a

most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier substance,

and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically

sealed. I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of

camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps

through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of

a fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago. I was about to throw

it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flamewas, in fact, an

excellent candleand I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking

down the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless

`I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would require a great effort of memory to recall my

explorations in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how I

hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron

promised best against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were

masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there

may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by

an explosion among the specimens. In another place was a vast array of idolsPolynesian, 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 tinmine, 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,

`It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three

fruittrees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position. Night was

creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hidingplace had still to be found. But that troubled me very little

now. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the MorlocksI had

matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we

could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of

the Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I

felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely

because of the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to

`We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon. I was determined to reach the

White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had

stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire,

to sleep in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I

saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had

anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night

before we reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the

darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a

warning, drove me onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and

`While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three

crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious

approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare

hillside, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer restingplace; 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 firemaking had been forgotten on the earth. The red

tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

`She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her.

But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. For a little way the

glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my

heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the

grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena

clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for

me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down

upon us here and there. I struck none of my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried

`For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above, and

my own breathing and the throb of the bloodvessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about

me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices

I had heard in the Underworld. There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon

me. Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena shivered

`It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a

struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing

sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my

neck. Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight

amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light is as soon as the

match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her

face to the ground. With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of

camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the

shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great

`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

`The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been

approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I

felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell

down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was

some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had

fallen. So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging down

branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my

camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but she

`Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover,

the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary

after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I

seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging

off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the matchbox, andit had gone! Then they gripped

and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and

the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught

by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all

these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and

went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my hand came against my iron

lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust

where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and

`The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and

Weena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree,

swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed.

Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came

within reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid?

And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I

began to see the Morlocks about methree battered at my feetand 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

`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

`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 realize 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

`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

`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 hidingplace 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 againterribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with

`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.

`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

`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 hopesto 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

`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

`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 perfectionabsolute

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

`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 theorizing

passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had

`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

`And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze

`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 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

`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

`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

`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 headI could hear the Morlock's

skull ringto 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.

`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 watchinto futurity.

`As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker;

thenthough I was still travelling with prodigious velocitythe 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 setit 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

`I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue.

Northeastward 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 southeastward 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 southeastern 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 southwest, 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

saltpink 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

`Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go

slanting and flittering 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 crablike 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 antennae, 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

`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, slowstirring monsters, the

uniform poisonouslooking 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 suna little larger, a little

dullerthe 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

`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 redhot 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 northeastward, 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

`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 realized 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

livesall 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

`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 redhot 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 shoalthere was no

mistake now that it was a moving thingagainst 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 bloodred 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.

`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 startingpoint, the night and day flapped

slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the

`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 shaky, 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

`And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the southeast corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest

again in the northwest, 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 hesitatedI 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

`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 tonight in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these

He looked at the Medical Man. `No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lieor 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

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 cigarthe sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others,

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 turned to us. `Where are the matches?' he said. He lit one and spoke over his pipe,

puffing. `To tell you the truth . . . I hardly believe it myself. . . . And yet . . .'

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned over the

hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some halfhealed scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. `The gynaeceum's odd,' he said. The

`I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one,' said the Journalist. `How shall we get home?'

`It's a curious thing,' said the Medical Man; `but I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that

eluded him. 'They were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.' He stared round the room.

`I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my

memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They

say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at timesbut I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And

where did the dream come from? . . . I must look at that 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 touchfor I put out my hand and felt the

rail of itand with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts,

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

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

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

substantiallooking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I

had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the

corridor. The Time Traveller met me in the smokingroom. He was coming from the house. He had a small

camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to

`Really and truly I do.' And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated. His eye wandered about the room.

`I only want half an hour,' he said. `I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you. There's some

magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the

corridor. I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper. What

was he going to do before lunchtime? Then suddenly I was reminded by an advertisement that I had

promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely save

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a

thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass

falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a

whirling mass of black and brass for a momenta figure so transparent that the bench behind with its 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

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

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

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.

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell

among the blooddrinking, 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 nowif I

may use the phrasebe wandering on some plesiosaurushaunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely

saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer 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 knowfor the question had

been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was madethought but cheerlessly of the

Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization 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 blankis 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 brittleto witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual