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I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
Epilogue
Endnotes
Colophon
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 I

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was ex-
pounding 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 pat-
ents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and
there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams
gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way⁠—
marking the points with a lean forefinger⁠—as 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.”
“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.
“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.”
“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things⁠—”
“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous
cube exist?”
“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.
“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?”
Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real
body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth,
Thickness, and⁠—Duration. 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 lives.”
“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his ci-
gar over the lamp; “that⁠⁠… very clear indeed.”
“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,” contin-
ued 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. There is no difference between Time and any of the
three dimensions of 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?”
“I have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.
“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 particularly⁠—why not another direction at right angles to
the other three?⁠—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geo-
metry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York
Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat sur-
face, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-di-
mensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions
they could represent one of four⁠—if they could master the perspective of the
thing. See?”
“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he
lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic
words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some time, brightening in a
quite transitory manner.
“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of
Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For in-
stance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, an-
other at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All these are evid-
ently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-
Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.
“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required
for the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that Time is only a kind
of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I
trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was
so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently
upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the di-
mensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced such a line,
and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension.”
“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 Time as
we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”
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 al-
ways have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions. But how
about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.”
“Not exactly,” said the Medical Man. “There are balloons.”
“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.
“Easier, far easier down than up.”
“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
moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimen-
sions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from
the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our exist-
ence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.”
“But the great difficulty is this,” interrupted the Psychologist. “You can
move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about in Time.”
 “That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we
cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very
vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become 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 Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the
other way?”
“Oh, this,” began Filby, “is all⁠—”
“Why not?” said the Time Traveller.
“It’s against reason,” said Filby.
“What reason?” said the Time Traveller.
“You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will never
convince me.”
“Possibly not,” said the Time Traveller. “But now you begin to see the ob-
ject of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long ago I
had a vague inkling of a machine⁠—”
“To travel through Time!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.
“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the
driver determines.”
Filby contented himself with laughter.
“But I have experimental verification,” said the Time Traveller.
“It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,” the Psychologist
suggested. “One might travel back and verify the accepted account of the
Battle of Hastings, for instance!”
“Don’t you think you would attract attention?” said the Medical Man.
“Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.”
“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 Little-go. The
German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
“Then there is the future,” said the Very Young Man. “Just think! One
might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry
on ahead!”
 “To discover a society,” said I, “erected on a strictly communistic basis.”
“Of all the wild extravagant theories!” began the Psychologist.
“Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until⁠—”
“Experimental verification!” cried I. “You are going to verify that?”
“The experiment!” cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.
“Let’s see your experiment anyhow,” said the Psychologist, “though it’s all
humbug, you know.”
The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly,
and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of
the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to
his laboratory.
The Psychologist looked at us. “I wonder what he’s got?”
“Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,” said the Medical Man, and
Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but before
he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby’s
anecdote collapsed.
The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic
framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made.
There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance. And now I
must be explicit, for this that follows⁠—unless his explanation is to be
accepted⁠—is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the small oc-
tagonal 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 illu-
minated. 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 be-
hind 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 con-
ceived and however adroitly done, could have been played upon us under
these conditions.
 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 another.”
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 rep-
resents 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 disap-
pear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy
yourselves there is no trickery. I don’t want to waste this model, and then be
told I’m a quack.”
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 man-
tel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became in-
distinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glit-
tering brass and ivory; and it was gone⁠—vanished! Save for the lamp the
table was bare.
Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.
The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under
the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. “Well?” he said,
with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he went to the to-
bacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe.
 We stared at each other. “Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you in
earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has travelled
into time?”
“Certainly,” said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire.
Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist’s face. (The
Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar
and tried to light it uncut.) “What is more, I have a big machine nearly fin-
ished in there”⁠—he indicated the laboratory⁠—“and when that is put together
I mean to have a journey on my own account.”
“You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?”
said Filby.
“Into the future or the past⁠—I don’t, for certain, know which.”
After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. “It must have gone
into the past if it has gone anywhere,” he said.
“Why?” said the Time Traveller.
“Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into
the future it would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled
through this time.”
“But,” I said, “if it travelled into the past it would have been visible when
we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we were here; and the
Thursday before that; and so forth!”
“Serious objections,” remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of im-
partiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.
“Not a bit,” said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: “You think.
You can explain that. It’s presentation below the threshold, you know, di-
luted presentation.”
“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 ma-
chine, 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 one-fiftieth or one-hundredth
of what it would make if it were not travelling in time. That’s plain enough.”
He passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. “You
see?” he said, laughing.
 We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time
Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.
“It sounds plausible enough tonight,” said the Medical Man; “but wait un-
til tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”
“Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?” asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down
the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flicker-
ing 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 laborat-
ory 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 com-
plete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside
some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it
seemed to be.
“Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you perfectly serious? Or is this a
trick⁠—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?”
“Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, “I
intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life.”
None of us quite knew how to take it.
I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked
at me solemnly.
 II

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 be-
lieved: 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 dis-
trusted 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 seri-
ous 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 re-
member 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 consid-
erable 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 Richmond⁠—I suppose I was one of the
Time Traveller’s most constant guests⁠—and, arriving late, found four or five
men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was stand-
ing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the
other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and⁠—“It’s half-past seven
now,” said the Medical Man. “I suppose we’d better have dinner?”
“Where’s⁠—?” said I, naming our host.
“You’ve just come? It’s rather odd. He’s unavoidably detained. He asks me
in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he’s not back. Says he’ll explain
when he comes.”
“It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,” said the Editor of a well-known
daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.
The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who
had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor
aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another⁠—a quiet, shy man with a
beard⁠—whom I didn’t know, and who, as far as my observation went, never
opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at the din-
ner-table about the Time Traveller’s absence, and I suggested time travel-
ling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that explained to him, and
the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the “ingenious paradox
and trick” we had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his expos-
ition 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 sur-
prise. “Good heavens! man, what’s the matter?” cried the Medical Man, who
saw him next. And the whole tableful turned towards the door.
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
greyer⁠—either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually faded.
His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it⁠—a cut half healed;
his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering. For a mo-
ment 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 stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.
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 to-
wards 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’m⁠—funny! Be all right in a minute.”
He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I re-
marked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and stand-
ing 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 dinner-table.
“What’s the game?” said the Journalist. “Has he been doing the Amateur
Cadger? I don’t follow.” I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my own
interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully
upstairs. I don’t think anyone else had noticed his lameness.
The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man,
who rang the bell⁠—the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at
dinner⁠—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a
grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed.
Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment;
and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. “Does our friend eke out his
modest income with a crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?” he
inquired. “I feel assured it’s this business of the Time Machine,” I said, and
took up the Psychologist’s account of our previous meeting. The new guests
were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. “What was this time
travelling? A man couldn’t cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox,
could he?” And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to carica-
ture. Hadn’t they any clothes-brushes 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
journalist⁠—very joyous, irreverent young men. “Our Special Correspondent
in the Day after Tomorrow reports,” the Journalist was saying⁠—or rather
shouting⁠—when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary
evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained of the change
that had startled me.
“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!” cried the Editor.
“Story be damned!” said the Time Traveller. “I want something to eat.
I won’t say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And
the salt.”
“One word,” said I. “Have you been time travelling?”
“Yes,” said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.
“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 fin-
gernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his face, started
convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner was uncomfort-
able. 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 eye-
lashes. 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 sup-
pose I must apologize,” he said. “I was simply starving. I’ve had a most
amazing time.” He reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. “But
come into the smoking-room. It’s too long a story to tell over greasy plates.”
And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.
“You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?” he said
to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.
“But the thing’s a mere paradox,” said the Editor.
“I can’t argue 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 true⁠—every word of it, all the same. I
was in my laboratory at four o’clock, and since then⁠⁠… I’ve lived eight days⁠⁠…
such days as no human being ever lived before! I’m nearly worn out, but I
shan’t sleep till I’ve told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no
interruptions! Is it agreed?”
“Agreed,” said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed “Agreed.” And with
that the Time 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 anim-
ated. In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy
of pen and ink⁠—and, above all, my own inadequacy⁠—to 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 smoking-room 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.

III

“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 travel-worn, 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 half-
past three!
“I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands,
and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.
Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards
the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place,
but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the
lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a
lamp, and in another moment came 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 switchback⁠—of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible
anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed
day like the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory
seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly
across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I
supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open
air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to
be conscious of any moving things. The 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 grey-
ness; 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 blue.
“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
changed⁠—melting and flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the di-
als 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
followed by the bright, brief green of spring.
“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 mind⁠—a certain curiosity and therewith
a certain dread⁠—until at last they took complete possession of me. What
strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our
rudimentary 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 to the business of stopping.
 “The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in
the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high
velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak,
attenuated⁠—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening
substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule
by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into
such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical
reaction⁠—possibly a far-reaching explosion⁠—would result, and blow myself
and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions⁠—into the Unknown. This
possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the ma-
chine; 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 incontin-
ently the thing went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.
“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 sit-
ting 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, sur-
rounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and
purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-
stones. 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. But all
else of the world was invisible.
“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
birch-tree 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 space⁠—
half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede
as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for
a moment and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the
sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.
“I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of
my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy cur-
tain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men?
What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval
the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman,
unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-
world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common
likeness⁠—a foul creature to be incontinently slain.
“Already I saw other vast shapes⁠—huge buildings with intricate parapets
and tall columns, with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me through
the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the
Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the
sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside
and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense
blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into noth-
ingness. 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 other on the lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to
mount again.
“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 cir-
cular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of fig-
ures 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 creature⁠—perhaps four feet high⁠—clad in
a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or buskins⁠—I
could not clearly distinguish which⁠—were 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 was.
“He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indes-
cribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind
of consumptive⁠—that 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.

IV

“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 ab-
sence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned
to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange
and very sweet and liquid tongue.
“There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight
or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed
me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and
deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again.
He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt
other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to make
sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was
something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence⁠—a graceful
gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I
could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like 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 I turned again to see what I could do in the way
of communication.
“And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further pe-
culiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was
uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not
the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly
minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the
little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and⁠—this may seem
egotism on my part⁠—I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the in-
terest I might have expected in them.
“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 con-
versation. 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 five-year-old 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 Time Machine in vain.
“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
came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.
“The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimen-
sions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people,
and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysteri-
ous. 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 ex-
amine them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the
turf among the rhododendrons.
“The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not ob-
serve 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 nineteenth-cen-
tury garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and sur-
rounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white
limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.
 “The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with col-
oured 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
slabs⁠—blocks, 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 hypertrophied raspberry and
orange, but for the most part they were strange.
“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
stained-glass 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 strong, silky material.
“Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were
strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some carnal crav-
ings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses,
cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the
fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all
the time I was there⁠—a floury thing in a three-sided husk⁠—was especially
good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange
fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive
their import.
“However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So
soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute at-
tempt 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 ges-
tures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning. At first
my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but
presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and re-
peated 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 interroga-
tions, 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 people more indolent or more easily fatigued.
“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 begin-
nings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had sur-
rounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disreg-
ard 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 my own devices.
“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 known⁠—even 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, per-
haps 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 AD. For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my ma-
chine recorded.
“As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly help
to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the world⁠—
for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of
granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precip-
itous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very
beautiful pagoda-like plants⁠—nettles possibly⁠—but wonderfully tinted with
brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derel-
ict remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not determine.
It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange
experience⁠—the first intimation of a still stranger discovery⁠—but of that I
will speak in its proper place.
“Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested
for a while, I realized that there were no small houses to be seen. Apparently
the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished. Here and
there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and the
cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English land-
scape, had disappeared.
“ ‘Communism,’ said I to myself.
“And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the half-dozen
little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had
the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girl-
ish 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 opinion.
“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
necessity⁠—indeed there is no necessity⁠—for an efficient family, and the spe-
cialization 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 reality.
“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 freedom and adventure I pushed
on up to the crest.
“There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize, cor-
roded 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 be-
come a garden.
“So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen,
and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something
in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half-truth⁠—or only a
glimpse of one facet of the truth.)
“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The
ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first time I
began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at
present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough.
Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The
work of ameliorating the conditions of life⁠—the true civilizing process that
makes life more and more secure⁠—had gone steadily on to a climax. One tri-
umph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that
are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and car-
ried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!
“After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudi-
mentary 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 are⁠—gradually by se-
lective 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 im-
prove 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 life to suit our human needs.
“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 decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.
“Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splen-
did 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 pop-
ulation had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.
“But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the
change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of
human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under
which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall;
conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon
self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and
the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for off-
spring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the
imminent dangers of the young. Now, where are these imminent dangers?
There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial jealousy,
against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts; unnecessary things
now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a
refined and pleasant life.
“I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelli-
gence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief in a per-
fect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had
been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality
to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came the reaction of
the altered conditions.
“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 con-
stant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance,
are no great help⁠—may even be hindrances⁠—to 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 con-
ditions under which it lived⁠—the flourish of that triumph which began the
last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to
art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.
“Even this artistic impetus would at last die away⁠—had almost died in the
Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sun-
light: 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 grind-
stone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful
grindstone broken at last!
“As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple ex-
planation 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 ru-
ins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough⁠—as most wrong
theories are!

“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 des-
cend and find where I could sleep.
“I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the fig-
ure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the
light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see the silver birch against it.
There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light, and
there was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled
my complacency. ‘No,’ said I stoutly to myself, ‘that was not the lawn.’
“But it was the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards
it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me? But you
cannot. The Time Machine was gone!
“At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own
age, of being left helpless in this strange new world. The bare thought of it
was an actual physical sensation. I could feel it grip me at the throat and
stop my breathing. In another moment I was in a passion of fear and run-
ning 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 ma-
chine, 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 seemed to smile in
mockery of my dismay.
“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 pro-
duced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time. The at-
tachment of the levers⁠—I will show you the method later⁠—prevented anyone
from tampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved,
and was hid, only in space. But then, where could it be?
“I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in
and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some
white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer. I remember, too,
late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched 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 have told you.
“There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which,
perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I have no doubt they
found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly out of the
quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and flare of a match.
For they had forgotten about matches. ‘Where is my Time Machine?’ I
began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking
them up together. It must have been very queer to them. Some laughed,
most of them looked sorely frightened. When I saw them standing round
me, it came into my head that I was doing as foolish a thing as it was pos-
sible for me to do under the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation
of fear. For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear
must be forgotten.
“Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people over
in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out under
the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet running and stum-
bling 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 kind⁠—a 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 within
reach of my arm.
“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 lost⁠—perhaps destroyed? It behoves 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
curious world.
“But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be
calm and patient, find its hiding-place, 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 travel-soiled. The freshness of the
morning made me desire an equal freshness. I had exhausted my emotion.
Indeed, as I went about my business, I found myself wondering at my in-
tense 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 ima-
gine made by a sloth. This directed my closer attention to the pedestal. It
was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly
decorated with deep framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at
these. The pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found
them discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes, but
possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I supposed, opened from within.
One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no very great mental effort
to infer that my Time Machine was inside that pedestal. But how it got there
was a different problem.
“I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling
to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then, pointing to the
bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open it. But at my first ges-
ture 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
delicate-minded woman⁠—it is how she would look. They went off as if they
had received the last possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking 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 the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.
“But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I
thought I heard something stir inside⁠—to be explicit, I thought I heard a
sound like a chuckle⁠—but 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 vi-
gil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four
hours⁠—that is another matter.
“I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes to-
wards 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 un-
known things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies mono-
mania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty
guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.’ Then suddenly
the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I
had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of
anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and the
most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my own ex-
pense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.
“Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people
avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do
with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of the
avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain from
any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things got back to the
old footing. I made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I
pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or
their language was excessively simple⁠—almost exclusively composed of con-
crete 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 pro-
positions. 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 cluster-
ing thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns.
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 reflec-
tion with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a
thud⁠—thud⁠—thud, 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 sun-scorched 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 of these
people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.
“And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and
modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real
future. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times which I have
read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and social arrange-
ments, 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 inac-
cessible 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 ex-
plain 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 very
little of the difference to your mind.
“In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria
nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, possibly, there
might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my ex-
plorings. 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 puzzled me still more: that
aged and infirm among this people there were none.
“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 ex-
plored were mere living places, great dining-halls 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 san-
dals, 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 half-playful fashion, in eating fruit
and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.
“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 felt⁠—how shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscrip-
tion, with sentences here and there in excellent plain English, and interpol-
ated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even, absolutely un-
known to you? Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of
Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself
to me!
“That day, too, I made a friend⁠—of 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, I was wrong.
“This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman,
as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an explora-
tion, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big
garland of flowers⁠—evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took my
imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my
best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in
a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
creature’s friendliness affected me exactly as a child’s might have done. We
passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers.
Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, which, though I
don’t know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was
the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended⁠—as I
will tell you!
“She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She tried
to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about it went to
my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after
me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world had to be mastered. I
had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirta-
tion. 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 shad-
ows, 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 dis-
tress I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.
 “It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me tri-
umphed, 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 res-
cue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming most
disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were feeling over
my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that
some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to
sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour
when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless
and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into the great hall,
and so out upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make
a virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.
“The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of
dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black, the
ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I
thought I could see ghosts. There several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw
white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, apelike creature run-
ning rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them
carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of
them. It seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still
indistinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-
morning feeling you may have known. I doubted my eyes.
“As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its
vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the view
keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures
of the half light. ‘They must 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 innu-
merable 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 to take far
deadlier possession of my mind.
“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 the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hot-
ter than we know it.
“Well, one very hot morning⁠—my fourth, I think⁠—as 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 darkness.
“The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my
hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn.
Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be
living came to my mind. And then I remembered that strange terror of the
dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I
will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and
touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something
white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer
little 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 an-
other pile of ruined masonry.
“My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull
white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair
on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see dis-
tinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours, or only with its fore-
arms 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 ob-
scurity, I came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have
told you, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could
this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, I
saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded
me steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like 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 lit another the little monster had disappeared.
“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 Upper-world were not the sole descendants of our
generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had
flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.
“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 Upper-worlders? 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 ab-
solutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper-world 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 slip-
ping 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 subter-
ranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made me think
that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued
underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached look common
in most animals that live largely in the dark⁠—the white fish of the Kentucky
caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting
light, are common features of nocturnal things⁠—witness the owl and the cat.
And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fum-
bling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the
head while in the light⁠—all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness
of the retina.
“Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of ventilat-
ing shafts and wells along the hill slopes⁠—everywhere, in fact, except along
the river valley⁠—showed how universal were its ramifications. What so nat-
ural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial Under-world that such
work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done? The no-
tion 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 very soon felt that it fell far short of
the truth.
“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 you⁠—and
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 still-in-
creasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end⁠—! Even now, does not an
East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off
from the natural surface of the earth?
“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people⁠—due, no doubt, to the in-
creasing 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 gulf⁠—which is due to the length and expense of the
higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations
towards refined habits on the part of the rich⁠—will make that exchange
between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present
retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less
and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves,
pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-
nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their la-
bour. 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 Upper-world people
were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pal-
lor followed naturally enough.
“The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape
in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-
operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a
perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system
of today. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a tri-
umph 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 too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders 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 Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had
seen of the Morlocks⁠—that, by the by, was the name by which these
creatures were called⁠—I could imagine that the modification of the human
type was even far more profound than among the ‘Eloi,’ the beautiful race
that I already knew.
“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 Under-world, 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 clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned
a match.

VI

“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 half-bleached colour
of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum.
And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking was largely
due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I
now began to appreciate.
“The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little dis-
ordered. 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 re-
member creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were
sleeping in the moonlight⁠—that night Weena was among them⁠—and feeling
reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even then, that in the course
of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights
grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below,
these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be
more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who
shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to
be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could
not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been dif-
ferent. But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the dark-
ness 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 nineteenth-century 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 façade had an Oriental look:
the face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of blu-
ish-green, 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 fol-
lowing 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 self-deception, 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 the early morning
towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.
“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 op-
position 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 ag-
onized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look
down at the unstable hooks to which I clung.
“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 aper-
ture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little Weena’s head
showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine below
grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was
profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.
“I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the
shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while I turned this
over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw
dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a slender loophole in the wall.
Swinging myself in, I found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel
in which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my
back was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall.
Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my
eyes. The air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down
the shaft.
 “I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my
face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily strik-
ing 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 abnor-
mally 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 glared at me in the strangest fashion.
“I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different
from that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own un-
aided 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 an-
other 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 match.
“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 fur-
nish 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,
and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.
“I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an ex-
perience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started with the
absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely
ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come without arms, without
medicine, without anything to smoke⁠—at times I missed tobacco
frightfully⁠—even without enough matches. If only I had thought of a Kodak!
I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and ex-
amined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and
the powers that Nature had endowed me with⁠—hands, feet, and teeth; these,
and four safety-matches that still remained to me.
“I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and
it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of
matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that moment that
there was any need to economize them, and I had wasted almost half the box
in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now, as I
say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank
fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleas-
ant 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 disen-
gaged, 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 rain, as they hurried after me.
“In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistak-
ing 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 looked⁠—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey
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 some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as
a trophy.
“That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet
of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping
my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness.
Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations of falling. At last,
however, I got over the well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin
into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet and
clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

VII

“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 discover-
ies. 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 under-
stand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening
quality of the Morlocks⁠—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I
loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a
pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a
beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon.
“The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new
moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible
remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult problem
to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was on the
wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And I now under-
stood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-
world 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 Upper-world 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 de-
cayed to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on suffer-
ance: 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 or-
ganism. 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 Under-world. 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 mysteri-
ous 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 de-
termined to make myself arms and a fastness where I might sleep. With that
refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of that confidence
I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I
could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered
with horror to think how they must already have examined me.
“I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but
found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the
buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as
the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the tall pinnacles of the
Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came back to
my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a child upon my
shoulder, I went up the hills towards the 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 sole⁠—they were comfortable old shoes I wore
about indoors⁠—so that I was lame. And it was already long past sunset when
I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of
the sky.
“Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a
while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occa-
sionally 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 changing my jacket
I found⁠⁠…”
The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently
placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the
little table. Then he resumed his narrative.
“As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the
hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the
house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace of
Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that we were
seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that great pause that comes
upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there
is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was
clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sun-
set. 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 num-
ber of sleeping houses, and by a statue⁠—a Faun, or some such figure, minus
the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks,
but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon
rose were still to come.
“From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and
black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either to the
right or the left. Feeling tired⁠—my feet, in particular, were very sore⁠—I care-
fully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the
turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt
of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what
it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight
of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger⁠—a danger I did not
care to let my imagination loose upon⁠—there would still be all the roots to
stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against.
“I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I
would not face it, but would pass the night upon the open hill.
“Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my
jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hillside was
quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now and then
a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear.
I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old con-
stellations 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 kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.
“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the
gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the
slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the
unknown future. I thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the
earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during
all the years that I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the
activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, lan-
guages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew
him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who
had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in
terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species,
and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of
what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little
Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and
forthwith dismissed the thought.
“Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I
could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the
old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a
hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came
a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire,
and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and
overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then
growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had
seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it
almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and
found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the
heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.
“I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and
pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to
break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing
in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as the night. And
then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of
what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill
from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of
human decay the Morlocks’ food had run short. Possibly they had lived on
rats and suchlike vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and ex-
clusive in his food than he was⁠—far less than any monkey. His prejudice
against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons
of men⁠—! I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were
less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four
thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of
things a torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were
mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon⁠—
probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side!
“Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon
me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had
been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his 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 Carlyle-like scorn of this
wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible.
However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of
the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a
sharer in their degradation and their Fear.
“I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My
first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms
of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was immediate. In the
next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should have the
weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient
against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break
open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering
ram. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of
light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not
imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had
resolved to bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over
in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had
chosen as our dwelling.

VIII

“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 cor-
roded 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 then⁠—though I never followed up the thought⁠—of what might have
happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.
“The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain,
and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I
thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to interpret this, but I
only learned that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head. She
always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because
her affection was so human.
“Within the big valves of the door⁠—which were open and broken⁠—we
found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side win-
dows. 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 skel-
eton. 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 pre-
servation of some of their contents.
“Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington!
Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid ar-
ray of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that
had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria
and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with
extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treas-
ures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare
fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had
in some instances been bodily removed⁠—by the Morlocks as I judged. The
place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who
had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently
came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood
beside me.
“And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an in-
tellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even
my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.
“To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a
great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology; possibly historical gal-
leries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in my present circum-
stances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of old-
time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery running
transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the
sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could
find no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deli-
quesced 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 spe-
cialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running paral-
lel 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 anim-
als, 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 anim-
ated nature had been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal
proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight
angle from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from
the ceiling⁠—many of them cracked and smashed⁠—which suggested that ori-
ginally 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.1 The end I had come in at was quite
above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the
length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last there was a
pit like the ‘area’ of a London house before each, and only a narrow line of
daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and
had been too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light,
until Weena’s increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that
the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I
looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less
even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a
number of small narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of
the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in the aca-
demic examination of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far ad-
vanced 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 gal-
lery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had heard down
the well.
“I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and
turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a sig-
nal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, I
put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central
aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty cor-
rectly, 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 en-
counter. 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 im-
possible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclina-
tion to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for
murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight
down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard.
“Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery
and into another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me
of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags
that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges
of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of
print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked
metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I
might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it
was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of
labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time
I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions and
my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.
“Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a
gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful dis-
coveries. 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 skirt-dance (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 fortu-
nate 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, per-
haps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia paint-
ing 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 flame⁠—was, in fact, an excellent candle⁠—and I put it in my pocket. I
found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze
doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced
upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.
“I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would require a
great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all the proper order. I
remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how I hesitated
between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, how-
ever, 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 speci-
mens. In another place was a vast array of idols⁠—Polynesian, Mexican,
Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yield-
ing to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite
monster from South America that particularly took my fancy.
“As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery after
gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of
rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I suddenly found myself
near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the merest accident I discovered,
in an airtight case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted ‘Eureka!’ and
smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a
little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I
did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. Of
course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their pres-
ence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed off in-
continently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my chances
of finding the Time Machine, all together into nonexistence.
“It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the
palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and refreshed
ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position. Night was
creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still to be found. But
that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a thing that was,
perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks⁠—I had matches! I had
the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that
the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected
by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine.
Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing
knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I
had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other
side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find
my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.
 IX

“We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the hori-
zon. 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 irritable. I felt sleep coming
upon me, and the Morlocks with it.
“While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against
their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long
grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The
forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we could get
through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether
safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could
contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was evident
that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my
firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my
head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover
the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingeni-
ous 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 some-
times the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and blacken,
but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasion-
ally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in
flame. In this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on
the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an al-
together 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 my little one, in my right hand
I had my iron bar.
“For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the
faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the
blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering 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 Under-world. There were
evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed,
in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And
Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.
“It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so, and,
as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my
knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds
from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and
back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it
flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I
hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as
soon as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying
clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With a
sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block
of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and
drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The
wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!
“She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and
rose to push on, and then there came a horrible 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 col-
lecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the
Morlocks’ eyes shone like carbuncles.
“The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two
white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One
was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones
grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a
little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gather-
ing 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 lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself
whether or not she breathed.
“Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made
me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My
fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my
exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that
I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But all was
dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging
fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the matchbox, and⁠—it had gone! Then
they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had
happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death
came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I
was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was in-
describably horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped
upon me. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider’s web. I was overpowered,
and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I
did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled
up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust
where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh
and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.
“The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting
came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to
make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree,
swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stir and
cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch
of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came within
reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if
the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange
thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the
Morlocks about me⁠—three battered at my feet⁠—and then I 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 slum-
brous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the
Morlocks’ flight.
“Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the
black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my
first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone.
The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree
burst into flame, left little time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I fol-
lowed in the Morlocks’ path. It was a close race. Once the flames crept for-
ward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike
off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so,
a Morlock came blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight
into the fire!
“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all
that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with
the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted
by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest,
with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the
space with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside were some thirty or forty
Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither
against each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not 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 avoided them,
looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.
“At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange
incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny
noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling uprush
of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare tatters of that red
canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the little
stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off
with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.
“For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit
myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with
my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and there,
and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon
God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in a kind
of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the
fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and
blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim
creatures, came the white light of the day.
“I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain
that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it
relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed
destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin a massacre of
the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as
I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From its summit I could now
make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from
that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the rem-
nant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as
the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across
smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated internally with
fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly, for I
was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness
for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity.
Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an
actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again⁠—terribly
alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you,
and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
“But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I
made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. The
box must have leaked before it was lost.

“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 laugh-
ing 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 cu-
polas above the ways to the Under-world. I understood now what all the
beauty of the Over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as
pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no
enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.
“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It
had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and
ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it
had attained its hopes⁠—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must
have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth
and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect
world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left un-
solved. And a great quiet had followed.
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the com-
pensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony
with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intel-
ligence 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 in-
telligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
“So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble pretti-
ness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry. But that perfect
state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection⁠—absolute per-
manency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of the Under-world, how-
ever 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 Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect,
still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce
rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the
Upper. And when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had
hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong
an explanation as mortal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to
me, and as that I give it to you.
“After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in spite
of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very
pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my theorizing passed into
dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own hint, and spreading myself
out upon the turf I had a long and refreshing sleep.
“I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being caught
napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down the hill to-
wards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand
played with the matches in my pocket.
“And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal
of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down
into grooves.
“At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.
“Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this
was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here, after all
my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek
surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to use it.
“A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.
For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.
Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze
frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been care-
fully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even
partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose.
“Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch of
the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze panels sud-
denly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the dark⁠—trapped.
So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled gleefully.
“I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me.
Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the levers and de-
part then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little thing. The matches
were of that abominable kind that light only on the box.
“You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were close
upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them with
the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. Then came
one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight against
their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the studs
over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost got away from me. As it
slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head⁠—I could hear
the Morlock’s skull ring⁠—to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in
the forest, I think, this last scramble.
“But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging hands
slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found myself in
the same grey light and tumult I have already described.

XI

“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 side-
ways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the ma-
chine 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 mil-
lions 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 sweep-
ing round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch⁠—into futurity.
“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The
palpitating greyness grew darker; then⁠—though I was still travelling with
prodigious velocity⁠—the blinking succession of day and night, which was
usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more
marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and
day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky,
until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight
brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet
glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun
had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set⁠—it simply rose and
fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon
had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given
place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun,
red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing
with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one
time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily re-
verted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising
and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to
rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the
earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to
reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the
thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere
mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach
grew visible.
“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The
sky was no longer blue. 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 glow-
ing 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 wa-
ter sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt⁠—pink under the lurid
sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was
breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of
mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it
is now.
“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing
like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and,
circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice
was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the ma-
chine. 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 tick-
ling 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 be-
hind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive
with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were
descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had
placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the
same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of
them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the
foliated sheets of intense green.
“I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the
world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the
stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform
poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one’s
lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years,
and there was the same red sun⁠—a little larger, a little duller⁠—the same dy-
ing sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping
in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward
sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.
“So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand
years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate, watching with a
strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and
the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years
hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth
part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling
multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid
green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with
white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came ed-
dying 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
sunset, was still unfrozen.
“I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain
indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I
saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks
alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in
the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some
black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I
looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black
object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and
seemed to me to twinkle very little.
“Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had
changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow
larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was
creeping over the day, and then I 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 num-
ber. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these life-
less sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the still-
ness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the
hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives⁠—all that was
over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant,
dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by
one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished
into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central
shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale
stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was abso-
lutely black.
“A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my
marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a
deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the
edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and in-
capable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw
again the moving thing upon the shoal⁠—there was no mistake now that it
was a moving thing⁠—against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing,
the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed
down from it; it seemed black against the weltering 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.
 XII

“So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the ma-
chine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun
got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctu-
ating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward
upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences
of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and others came.
Presently, when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to
recognize our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran
back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower.
Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I
slowed the mechanism down.
“I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that
when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett had
walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I re-
turned, 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 labor-
atory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had
previously entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment;
but he passed like a flash.
“Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off the thing
very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes I trembled
violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing have
been a dream.
“And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the 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
hesitated⁠—I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and
opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I
am telling you the story.
“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
strange adventures.”
He looked at the Medical Man. “No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take
it as a lie⁠—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have
been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this
fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its
interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?”
He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with
it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary stillness.
Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my
eyes off the Time Traveller’s face, and looked round at his audience. They
were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before them. The Medical
Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The Editor was
looking hard at the end of his cigar⁠—the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for
his watch. The others, as far as I remember, were motionless.
The Editor stood up with a sigh. “What a pity it is you’re not a writer of
stories!” he said, putting his hand on the Time Traveller’s shoulder.
“You don’t believe it?”
“Well⁠—”
“I thought not.”
The Time Traveller turned to us. “Where are 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 half-healed scars on his knuckles.
 The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. “The
gynaeceum’s odd,” he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see, holding
out his hand for a specimen.
“I’m hanged if it isn’t a quarter to one,” said the Journalist. “How shall we
get home?”
“Plenty of cabs at the station,” said the Psychologist.
“It’s a curious thing,” said the Medical Man; “but I certainly don’t know
the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?”
The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: “Certainly not.”
“Where did you really get them?” said the Medical Man.
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 times⁠—but I can’t stand another that won’t fit. It’s
madness. And where did the dream come from?⁠⁠… I must look at that ma-
chine. If there is one!”
He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the
door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering light of the
lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass,
ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch⁠—for I
put out my hand and felt the rail of it⁠—and with brown spots and smears
upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry.
The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand
along the damaged rail. “It’s all right now,” he said. “The story I told you was
true. I’m sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.” He took up the
lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking-room.
He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat. The
Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he
was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him
standing in the open doorway, bawling good night.
I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a “gaudy lie.” For my
own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so fantastic
and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I lay awake most of the
night thinking about it. I determined to go next day and see the Time
Traveller again. I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms
in the house, I went up to him. The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared
for a minute at the Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the
lever. At that the squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken
by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminis-
cence 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 smoking-room.
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 el-
bow to shake. “I’m frightfully busy,” said he, “with that thing in there.”
“But is it not some hoax?” I said. “Do you really travel through time?”
“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 you’ll forgive my leaving you now?”
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 laborat-
ory 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 advert-
isement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two. I
looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely save that engagement. I got
up and went down the passage to tell the Time Traveller.
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, in-
distinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment⁠—a
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 had, apparently, just been
blown in.
 I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had
happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing
might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the
manservant appeared.
We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. “Has Mr. ⸻ gone
out that way?” said I.
“No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here.”
At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on,
waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger
story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him.
But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time
Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has
never returned.

Epilogue

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept
back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the
Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among
the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He
may even now⁠—if I may use the phrase⁠—be wandering on some plesio-
saurus-haunted 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 weari-
some problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part,
cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory,
and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating time! I say, for my own
part. He, I know⁠—for the question had been discussed among us long before
the Time Machine was made⁠—thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement
of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heap-
ing 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 fu-
ture is still black and blank⁠—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by
the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange
white flowers⁠—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle⁠—to witness
that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tender-
ness still lived on in the heart of man.

Endnotes

1. 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 Time Machine
was published in 1895 by
H. G. Wells.

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