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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven. Now, indeed I seemed in a worse case
than before. Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the
loss of the time machine, I had felt a sustaining
hope of ultimate escape. But that hope was staggered by
these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded
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by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by
some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome.
But there was an altogether new elements in the sickening
quality of the Morlocks, a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively
I loathed them. Before I had felt as a man
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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
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first incomprehensible remarks about the dark nights. It was not
now such a very difficult problem to guess what the
coming of dark nights might mean. The moon was on
the wane each night, there was a longer interval of darkness,
and now I understood to some slight degree at least
the reason of the fear of the little upper world
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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 favored aristocracy and the Morlocks their mechanical servants, but
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that had long since passed away. The two species that
had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down
towards or had already arrived at an altogether new relationship.
The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere,
beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance, since
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the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last
to find the day that 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 paused
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with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals
in sport. Because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it
on the organism. But clearly the old order was already
in part reversed. The nemesis of the delicate ones was
creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago. Men
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had thrust his brother Men out of the ease and
the sunshine, and now that brother was coming back changed.
Already the eloy 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
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seen in the underworld. It seemed odd, how it floated
into my mind, not stirred up, as it were, by
the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like
a question from outside. I tried to recall the form
of it. I had a vague sense of something familiar,
but I could not tell what it was at the time. Still, however,
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helpless the little peopled in the presence of their mysterious fear,
I was differently constituted. I came out of this age
of ours, this ripe prime of the human race. When
fear does not paralyze and mystery has lost its terrors,
I at least would defend myself without further delay. I
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determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I
might leap. 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
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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 practical to such
dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells,
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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 near eighteen.
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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
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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, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick
flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always
puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that
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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
traveler 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
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the hush of the 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 gray 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.
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You know that great pause that comes upon things before
the dusk, even the breeze stops in the trees. To me,
there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness.
The sky was clear, remote and empty, save for a
few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well that night,
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the expectation took the color of my fears. In that
darkling calm, my senses seemed peter naturally sharpened. I fancied
I could even feel the the hollowness of the ground
beneath my feet, could indeed almost see through it, the
Morlocks on their ant hill, going hither and thither and
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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,
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and one star after another came out. The ground grew
dim and the trees black. Ween As 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.
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So we went down a long slope into a valley,
and there, in the dimness, I almost walked into a
little river. This I waited and went up on the
opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses,
and by a statue a fawn or some such figure
minus the head. Here too were acacious. So far I
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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
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very sore, I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as
I halted and sat down upon the turf, I could
no longer see the palace of green porcelain, and I
was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the
thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide.
Under that dense tangle of branches. One would be out
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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 bowls to strike against.
I was very tired too, after the excitements of the day,
so I decided that I would not face it, but
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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.
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The stars for the night was very clear. I felt
a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All
the old constellations had gone from the sky. However, that
slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human life.
Times had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But
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the milky way, it seemed to me, was still the
same tattered streamer of star dust 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 serious, and amid all these scintillating
points of light, one bright planet shone kindly and steadily,
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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
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great processional 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 the few revolutions,
all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations,
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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,
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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 star
like under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. Through
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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
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a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
some colorless 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
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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.
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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 were no such thing in
nature as the night. And then I thought once more
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of the meat 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 morlock's food had run short.
Possibly they had lived on rats and such like vermin.
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Even now, man is far less discriminating and exclusive 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,
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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
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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 labors of his fellow man had taken necessity
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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. End of Chapter seven