Chapter 9 (The Time Machine)

01Chapter 9.

02Of The Time Machine.

03By H.

04G.

05Wells.

06This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

07The Time Machine.

08Chapter 9.

09We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon.

10I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I proposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey.

11My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare.

12Accordingly, as we went along, I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter.

13Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated, and besides, Weena was tired.

14And I began to suffer from sleepiness, too, so that it was full night before we reached the wood.

15Upon the shrubby hill of its edge, Weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us.

16But a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward.

17I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable.

18I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

19While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures.

20There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach.

21The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across.

22If we could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting place.

23I thought that with my matches and my camphor, I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods.

24Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands, I should have to abandon my firewood.

25So, rather reluctantly, I put it down.

26And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it.

27I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.

28I 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.

29The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.

30Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire.

31Decaying vegetation may occasionally smolder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame.

32In this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth.

33The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

34She wanted to run to it and play with it.

35I believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her.

36But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood.

37For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path.

38Looking 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.

39I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me.

40It was very black, and Weena clung to me convulsively.

41But there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems.

42Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there.

43I struck none of my matches, because I had no hand free.

44Upon my left arm I carried my little one.

45In my right hand I had my iron bar.

46For 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.

47Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me.

48I pushed on grimly.

49The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard in the underworld.

50There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me.

51Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm, and Weena shivered violently and became quite still.

52It was time for a match.

53But to get one I must put her down.

54I 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.

55Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.

56Then the match scratched and fizzed.

57I held it flaring and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees.

58I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane.

59Then I looked at Weena.

60She was lying clutching my feet, and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.

61With a sudden fright, I stooped to her.

62She seemed scarcely to breathe.

63I 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.

64The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company.

65She seemed to have fainted.

66I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realization.

67In maneuvering 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.

68For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain.

69I found myself in a cold sweat.

70I had to think rapidly what to do.

71I determined to build a fire and encamp where we were.

72I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bowl, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves.

73Here and there, out of the darkness round me, the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.

74The camphor flickered and went out.

75I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.

76One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist.

77He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down.

78I lit another piece of camphor and went on gathering my bonfire.

79Presently 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.

80So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging down branches.

81Very soon I had a choking, smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my camphor.

82Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace.

83I tried what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead.

84I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

85Now the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden.

86Moreover, the vapor of camphor was in the air.

87My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so.

88I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down.

89The wood, too, was full of a slumberous murmur that I did not understand.

90I seemed just to nod and open my eyes.

91But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me.

92Flinging off their clinging fingers, I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and it had gone.

93Then they gripped and closed with me again.

94In a moment I knew what had happened.

95I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul.

96The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood.

97I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down.

98It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all those soft creatures heaped upon me.

99I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web.

100I was overpowered and went down.

101I felt little teeth nipping at my neck.

102I rolled over, and as I did so, my hand came against my iron lever.

103It gave me strength.

104I struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and holding the bar short, I thrust where I judged their faces might be.

105I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.

106The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me.

107I knew that both I and Wena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat.

108I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me.

109The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them.

110A minute passed.

111Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster.

112Yet none came within reach.

113I stood glaring at the blackness.

114Then suddenly came hope.

115What if the Morlocks were afraid?

116And close on the heels of that came a strange thing.

117The darkness seemed to grow luminous.

118Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me.

119Three 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.

120And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.

121As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the branches and vanish.

122And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumberous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks' flight.

123Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest.

124It was my first fire coming after me.

125With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone.

126The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection.

127My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks' path.

128It was a close race.

129Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left.

130But, 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.

131And now I was able to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that future age.

132This whole space was as bright as day, with the reflection of the fire.

133In the center was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn.

134Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire.

135Upon 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.

136At 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.

137But 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.

138Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him.

139At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me.

140I 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.

141I walked about the hill among them, and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena.

142But Weena was gone.

143At 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.

144The coiling upbrush 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.

145Two or three morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.

146For the most part of that night, I was persuaded it was a nightmare.

147I bit myself, and screamed in a passionate desire to awake.

148I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again sat down.

149Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes, and calling upon God to let me awake.

150Thrice I saw morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony, and rush into the flames.

151But 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.

152I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none.

153It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest.

154I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined.

155As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself.

156The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest.

157From 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.

158And so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet, and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the time-machine.

159I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena.

160It seemed an overwhelming calamity.

161Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss.

162But that morning, it left me absolutely lonely again, terribly alone.

163I 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.

164But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery.

165In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches.

166The box must have leaked before it was lost.

167End of chapter 9