The Time Machine - Chapter 3

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter three of The Time Machine byH. G. Wells. I told
some of you last Thursday of theprinciples of the time machine, and showed
you the actual thing itself, incompletein the workshop. There. It is
now a little travel worn truly,and one of the ivory bars is cracked

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and a brass rail bent, butthe rest of it sound enough. I
expected to finish it on Friday.But on Friday, when the putting together
was nearly done, I found thatone of the nickel bars was exactly one
inch too short, and this Ihad to get remade, so that the
thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to day

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that the first of all time machinesbegan its career. I gave it at
last tap, tried all the screwsagain, put one more drop of oil
on the quartz rod, and satmyself in the saddle. I suppose a
suicide who holds a pistol to hisskull feels much the same wonder at what
will come next as I felt.Then I took the starting lever in one

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hand and the stopping one in theother. Pressed the first, and almost
immediately the second, I seemed toreel I felt a nightmare sensation of falling,
and looking around, I saw thelaboratory exactly as before. Had anything
happened. For a moment I suspectedthat my intellect had tricked me. Then

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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 myteeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with athud. The laboratory got hazy and went

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dark. Missus Watchett came in andwalked, apparently without seeing me, towards
the garden door. I suppose ittook 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 leverover to its extreme position. The night
came like the turning out of alamp, and in another moment came tomorrow.

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The laboratory grew faint and hazy,then fainter and even fainter. Tomorrow
night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster
and faster. Still, an eddyingmurmur filled my ears, and a strange
dumb confusedness descended on my mind.I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar

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sensations of time traveling. They areexcessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly
like that one has upon a switchbackof a helpless headlong motion. I felt
the same horrible anticipation, too,of an imminent smash as I put on
pace. Night followed day, likethe flapping of a black wing. The

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dim suggestion of a laboratory seemed presentlyto fall away from me, and I
saw the sun hopping swiftly across thesky, leaping it every minute, and
every minute marking a day. Isuppose the laboratory had been destroyed, and
I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding,

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but I was already going too fastto be conscious of any moving things.
The slowest snail that ever crawled dashedby too fast for me. The
twinkling succession of darkness and light wasexcessively painful to the eye. Then,
in the intermittent darknesses, I sawthe moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from

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new to full, and had afaint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently
As I went on, still gainingvelocity, the palpitation of night and day
merged into one continuous grayness. Thesky took on a wonderful deepness of blue,
a splendid, luminous color like thatof early twilight. The jerking sun

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became a streak of fire, abrilliant arch in space, the moon a
fainter, fluctuating band, and Icould see nothing of the stars save now
and then a brighter circle flickering inthe blue. The landscape was misty and
vague. I was still on thehillside upon which this house now stands,

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and the shoulder rose above me,gray and dim. I saw trees growing
and changing, like puffs of vapor, now brown, now green. They
grew, spread, shivered, andpassed away. I saw huge buildings rise
up, faint and fair, andpass like dreams. The whole surface of

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the earth seemed changed, melting andflowing under my eyes. The little hands
upon the dials that registered my speedraced round faster and faster. Presently I
noted that the sun belt swayed upand down from solstice to solstice in a
minute or less, and that consequentlymy pace was over a year. A

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minute and minute by minute, thewhite 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 poignantnow. They merged at last into a
kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked, indeed, a clumsy swaying of the

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machine for which I was unable toaccount, But my mind was too confused
to attend to it. So,with a kind of madness growing upon me,
I flung myself into futurity. Atfirst I scarce thought of stopping,
scarce thought of anything but these newsensations. But presently a fresh series of

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impressions grew up in my mind acertain curiosity, and therewith a certain dread,
until at last they took complete possessionof me. What strange developments of
humanity, What wonderful advances upon ourrudimentary civilization? I thought might not appear.

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When I came to look nearly intothe dim elusive world that raised and
fluctuated before my eyes, I sawgreat and splendid architecture rising about me,
more massive than any buildings of ourown time, And yet it seemed built
of glimmer and mist. I sawa richer green flow up the hillside,

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and remain there without any wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion,
the earth seemed very fair, andso my mind came round to the
business of stopping. The peculiar risklay in the possibility of my finding some
substance in the space which I orthe machine occupied. So long as I

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traveled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered. I was,
so to speak, attenuated, wasslipping like a vapor through the interstices of
intervening substances. But to come toa stop involved the jamming of myself,
molecule by molecule, into whatever layin my way. Meant bringing my atoms

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into such intimate contact with those ofthe obstacle, that a profound chemical reaction,
possibly a far reaching explosion, wouldresult and blow myself and my apparatus
out of all possible dimensions into theunknown. This possibility had occurred to me
again and again while I was makingthe machine, but then I had cheerfully

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accepted it as an unavoidable risk,one of the risks a man has got
to take. Now the risk wasinevitable. I no longer saw it in
the same cheerful light. The factis that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness
of everything, the sickly jarring andswaying of the machine, above all,

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the feeling of prolonged falling, hadabsolutely upset my nerve. I told myself
that I could never stop, andwith a gust of petulance, I resolved
to stop. Forthwith, like animpatient fool, I lugged over the lever,
and incontinently the thing went wreathing over, and I was flung headlong through
the air. There was a soundof a clap of thunder in my ears.

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I may have been stunned for amoment. A pitiless hail was hissing
round me, and I was sittingon a soft turf in front of the
overset machine. Everything still seemed gray, but presently I remarked that the confusion
in my ears was gone. Ilooked round me. I was on what

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seemed to be a little lawn ina garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes,
and I noticed that their mauve andpurple blossoms were dropping in a shower under
the beating of the hailstones. Therebounding dancing hail hung in a cloud over
the machine and drove along the groundlike smoke. In a moment, I

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was wet to the skin. Finehospitality, said I to a man who
has traveled innumerable years to see you. Presently, I thought what a fool
I was to get wet. Istood up and looked round me. A
colossal figure, carved apparently in somewhite stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons

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through the hazy downpour. But allelse 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. Itwas of a white marble in shape,

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something like a winged sphinx, butthe wings, instead of being carried vertically
at the sides, were spread sothat it seemed to hover. The pedestal,
it appeared to me, was ofbronze and was thick with verdigris.
It chasked that the face was towardsme. The sightless eyes seemed to watch

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me. There was the faint shadowof a smile on the lips. It
was greatly weather worn, and thatimparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I
stood looking at it for a littlespace, half a minute, perhaps,
or half an hour. It seemedto advance and to recede, as the

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hail drove before it, denser orthinner. At last, I tore my
eyes from it for a moment,and saw that the hail curtain had worn
threadbare, and that the sky waslightning with the promise of the sun.
I looked up again at the crouchingwhite shape, and the full temerity of
my voyage came suddenly upon me.What might appear when that hazy curtain was

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altogether withdrawn? What might not havehappened to men? What if cruelty had
grown into a common passion? Whatif in this interval the race had lost
its manliness and had developed into somethinginhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful.
I might seem some old world,savage animal, only the more dreadful and

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disgusting for our common likeness, afoul creature to be incontinently slain. Already
I saw other vast shapes, hugebuildings with intricate parapets and tall columns,
with a wooded hillside dimly creeping inupon me through the lessening storm. I
was seized with panic fear. Iturned frantically to the time machine and strove

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hard to readjust it. As Idid so, the shafts of the sun
smote through the thunderstorm. The graydownpour was swept aside and vanished, like
the trailing garments of a ghost.Above me, in the intense blue of
the summer sky, some faint brownshreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The

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great buildings about me stood out clearand distinct, shining with the wet of
the thunderstorm, and picked out inwhite by the unmelted hailstones piled along their
courses. I felt naked in astrange world. I felt as perhaps a
bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will

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swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set
my teeth, and again grappling fiercelywrist and knee with the machine. It
gave under my desperate onset and turnedover. It struck my chin violently,
one hand on the saddle, theother on the lever. I stood panting,

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heavily in attitude to mount again.But with this recovery of a prompt
retreat, my courage recovered. Ilooked more curiously and less fearfully at this
world of the remote future. Ina circular opening high up in the wall
of the nearer house, I sawa group of figures clad in rich soft

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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 ofmen running. One of these emerged in
a pathway leading straight to the littlelawn upon which I stood with my machine.

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He was a slight creature, perhapsfour feet high, clad in a
purple tunic, girdled at the waistwith a leather belt. Sandals or buskins
I could not clearly distinguish which wereon his feet. His legs were bare
to the knees, and his headwas bare. Noticing that, I noticed
for the first time how warm theair was. He struck me as being

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a very beautiful and graceful creature,but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded
me of the more beautiful kind ofconsumptive that hectic beauty of which we used
to hear so much. At thesight of him, I suddenly regained confidence.
I took my hands from the machine. End of Chapter three.