October 24, 2025 • 14 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six. 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 color of the worms and things
one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum, and
(00:22):
they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking
was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi,
whose disgust of the morlocks I now began to appreciate.
The next night, I did not sleep well. Probably my
health was a little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity
and doubt. Once or twice I had a feeling of
(00:45):
intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason.
I remember creeping noiselessly into the Great Hall, where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night, Weena
was among them, and being reassured by their presence. It
occurred to me even then that in the course of
(01:05):
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
(01:26):
one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that
the time machine was only to be recovered by boldly
penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery.
If only I had had a companion, it would have
been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even
(01:46):
to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me.
I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but
I never felt quite safe at my back. It was
this restlessness, this insecure perhaps, that drove me further and
further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the southwestward
(02:08):
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 facade had
(02:28):
an oriental look, the face of it having the luster
as well as the pale green tint a kind of
bluish 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 site
(02:50):
of the place after a long and tiring circuit. So
I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day,
and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of
Little 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
(03:11):
day and 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
(03:34):
strangely disconcerted. Good Bye, 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
(03:54):
a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began
to pull at me with her little hands. I think
her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off,
perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was
in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized
face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then
(04:16):
I clung 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
(04:37):
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 I went on clambering
(05:01):
down the sheer descent with as quick emotion as possible.
Glancing upward, I saw the aperture a small blue disk
in which a star was visible, while little Weena's head
showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of
a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save
(05:21):
that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I
looked up again, Weena had disappeared. I was in an
agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to
go up the shaft again and leave the underworld alone,
But even while I turned this over in my mind,
I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I
(05:45):
saw dimly coming up a foot to the right of me,
a slender loop hole 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.
(06:07):
Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect
upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb
and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. I
do not know how long I lay. I was roused
by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in
the darkness, I snatched at my matches and hastily striking one,
(06:32):
I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one
I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating
before the light, living as they did in what appeared
to me impenetrable darkness. Their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive,
just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and
(06:52):
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
(07:13):
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 overworld people, so that I
was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the
thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind,
but I said to myself, you are in for it now,
(07:36):
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 into a large open space, and,
striking another match, saw that I had entered a vast,
arched cavern which stretched into utter darkness beyond the range
of my light. The view I had of it was
(07:58):
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,
(08:20):
and a faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in
the air. Some Way down the central vista was a
little table of white metal laid with what seemed a meal.
The morlocks, at any rate, were carnivorous. Even at the time,
I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to
furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct,
(08:44):
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 wrigglar red spot
in the blackness. I have thought since how particularly ill
(09:06):
equipped I was for such an experience. When I had
started with the time machine, I had started with the
absurd assumption that the men of the future would certainly
be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I
had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke.
At times, I missed tobacco frightfully, even without enough matches.
(09:30):
If only I had thought of a Kodak, I could
have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second
and examined it at leisure. But as it was, I
stood there with only the weapons and the powers that
nature had endowed me with hands, feet, and teeth, these
and four safety matches that still remained to me. I
(09:53):
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,
(10:17):
as I say, I had four left, And while I
stood in the dark, a hand touched mine. Lank fingers
came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of
a peculiar, unpleasant odor. I fancied. I heard the breathing
of a crowd of these dreadful little beings about me.
I felt the box of matches in my hand being
(10:40):
gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing.
The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant.
The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly. In
the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.
(11:02):
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.
(11:27):
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 darkness I could hear the morlocks
rustling like wind among leaves and pattering like the rain
(11:51):
as they hurried after me. In a moment, I was
clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that
they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
light and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can
scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless
faces and great, lidless, pinkish gray eyes as they stared
(12:15):
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 laid down on the edge for the
throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then
(12:38):
I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and as I
did so, my feet were grass 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
(13:01):
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
(13:23):
my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle
against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
felt all the sensations a 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.
(13:44):
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the eloy Then, for a time I was insensible.
End of chapter six
Chapter six. 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 color of the worms and things
one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum, and
(00:22):
they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking
was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi,
whose disgust of the morlocks I now began to appreciate.
The next night, I did not sleep well. Probably my
health was a little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity
and doubt. Once or twice I had a feeling of
(00:45):
intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason.
I remember creeping noiselessly into the Great Hall, where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night, Weena
was among them, and being reassured by their presence. It
occurred to me even then that in the course of
(01:05):
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
(01:26):
one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that
the time machine was only to be recovered by boldly
penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery.
If only I had had a companion, it would have
been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even
(01:46):
to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me.
I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but
I never felt quite safe at my back. It was
this restlessness, this insecure perhaps, that drove me further and
further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the southwestward
(02:08):
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 facade had
(02:28):
an oriental look, the face of it having the luster
as well as the pale green tint a kind of
bluish 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 site
(02:50):
of the place after a long and tiring circuit. So
I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day,
and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of
Little 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
(03:11):
day and 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
(03:34):
strangely disconcerted. Good Bye, 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
(03:54):
a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began
to pull at me with her little hands. I think
her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off,
perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was
in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized
face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then
(04:16):
I clung 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
(04:37):
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 I went on clambering
(05:01):
down the sheer descent with as quick emotion as possible.
Glancing upward, I saw the aperture a small blue disk
in which a star was visible, while little Weena's head
showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of
a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save
(05:21):
that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I
looked up again, Weena had disappeared. I was in an
agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to
go up the shaft again and leave the underworld alone,
But even while I turned this over in my mind,
I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I
(05:45):
saw dimly coming up a foot to the right of me,
a slender loop hole 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.
(06:07):
Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect
upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb
and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. I
do not know how long I lay. I was roused
by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in
the darkness, I snatched at my matches and hastily striking one,
(06:32):
I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one
I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating
before the light, living as they did in what appeared
to me impenetrable darkness. Their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive,
just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and
(06:52):
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
(07:13):
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 overworld people, so that I
was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the
thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind,
but I said to myself, you are in for it now,
(07:36):
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 into a large open space, and,
striking another match, saw that I had entered a vast,
arched cavern which stretched into utter darkness beyond the range
of my light. The view I had of it was
(07:58):
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,
(08:20):
and a faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in
the air. Some Way down the central vista was a
little table of white metal laid with what seemed a meal.
The morlocks, at any rate, were carnivorous. Even at the time,
I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to
furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct,
(08:44):
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 wrigglar red spot
in the blackness. I have thought since how particularly ill
(09:06):
equipped I was for such an experience. When I had
started with the time machine, I had started with the
absurd assumption that the men of the future would certainly
be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I
had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke.
At times, I missed tobacco frightfully, even without enough matches.
(09:30):
If only I had thought of a Kodak, I could
have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second
and examined it at leisure. But as it was, I
stood there with only the weapons and the powers that
nature had endowed me with hands, feet, and teeth, these
and four safety matches that still remained to me. I
(09:53):
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,
(10:17):
as I say, I had four left, And while I
stood in the dark, a hand touched mine. Lank fingers
came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of
a peculiar, unpleasant odor. I fancied. I heard the breathing
of a crowd of these dreadful little beings about me.
I felt the box of matches in my hand being
(10:40):
gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing.
The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant.
The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly. In
the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.
(11:02):
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.
(11:27):
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 darkness I could hear the morlocks
rustling like wind among leaves and pattering like the rain
(11:51):
as they hurried after me. In a moment, I was
clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that
they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
light and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can
scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless
faces and great, lidless, pinkish gray eyes as they stared
(12:15):
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 laid down on the edge for the
throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then
(12:38):
I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and as I
did so, my feet were grass 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
(13:01):
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
(13:23):
my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle
against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
felt all the sensations a 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.
(13:44):
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the eloy Then, for a time I was insensible.
End of chapter six
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