The Time Machine: Chapters 7–9

As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east.

A queer doubt chilled my complacency.

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.

I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby.

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.

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 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, even anger at the folly of leaving the machine having leaked away with my strength. I had nothing left but misery.

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.

They all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at 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.

I saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me.

To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania.

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

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.

Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain.

And even of what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe?

I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilisation and a decadent humanity did not long endure.

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

Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you?

Very possibly I had been feeling desolate.

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.

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.

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.

The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.

Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone.

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.

I could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar.

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.

Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit.

Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings were the habitat of the New Race. The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes—everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley—showed how universal were its ramifications.

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.

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.

But even on this supposition the balanced civilisation 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 Overworlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence.

It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found 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.

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 bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain.

She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted.

Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare.

It had never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economise them, and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Overworlders, to whom fire was a novelty.