The Time Machine - Chapter 7

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter seven of The Time Machine byH. G. Wells. Now,
indeed I seemed in a worse casethan before. Hitherto, except during my
night's anguish at the loss of thetime Machine, I had felt a sustaining
hope of ultimate escape. But thathope was staggered by these new discoveries.

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Hitherto I had merely thought myself impededby the childish simplicity of the little people,
and by some unknown forces which Ihad only to understand to overcome.
But there was an altogether new elementin the sickening quality of the morlocks,
a something inhuman and malign. InstinctivelyI loathed them. Before I had felt

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as a man might feel who hadfallen into a pit. My concern was
with the pit and how to getout of it. Now I felt like
a beast in a trap whose enemywould 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 headby some at first incomprehensible remarks about

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the dark nights. It was notnow such a very difficult problem to guess
what the coming of dark nights mightmean. The moon was on the wane.
Each night there was a longer intervalof darkness, And now I understood
to some slight degree at least thereason of the fear of the little upper
world people for the dark. Iwondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be

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that the Morlocks did under the newmoon. 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 Morlockstheir mechanical servants, but that had long
since passed away. The two speciesthat had resulted from the evolution of man

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were sliding down to words, orhad already arrived at an altogether new relationship.
The eloy, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere,
beautiful futility. They still possessed theearth on sufferance, since the Morlocks,
subterranean for innumerable generations, had comeat last to find the daylit surface intolerable.

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And the Morlocks made their garments Iinferred and maintained them in their habitual
needs, perhaps through the survival ofan old habit of service. They did
it as a standing horse paused withhis foot, or as a man enjoys
killing animals in sport, because ancientand departed necessities had impressed it on the

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organism. But clearly the old orderwas already in part reversed. The nemesis
of the delicate ones was creeping onapace. Ages ago, thousands of generations
ago, Men had thrust his brotherMen out of the ease and the sunshine,
And now that brother was coming backchanged. Already the eloy had begun

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to learn one old lesson anew.They were becoming reacquainted with fear. And
suddenly there came into my head thememory of the meat I had 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 fromoutside. I tried to recall the form

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of it. I had a vaguesense of something familiar, but I could
not tell what it was at thetime. Still, however, helpless the
little people in the presence of theirmysterious fear, I was differently constituted.
I came out of this age ofours, this ripe prime of the human

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race. When fear does not paralyzeand mystery has lost its terrors, I
at least would defend myself out furtherdelay. I determined to make myself arms
and a fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base,
I could face this strange world withsome of that confidence I had lost in

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realizing to what creatures night by nightI lay exposed. I felt I could
never sleep again until my bed wassecure from them. I shuddered with horror
to think how they must already haveexamined 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 buildingsand trees seemed easily practical to such dexterous

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climbers as the Morlocks, to judgeby their wells, must be. Then
the tall pinnacles of the Palace ofGreen 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 sevenor eight miles, but it must

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have been near eighteen. I hadfirst seen the place on a moist afternoon,
when distances are deceptively diminished. Inaddition, the heel of one of
my shoes was loose, and anail was working through the sole. They
were comfortable old shoes. I woreabout indoors, so that I was lame,
and it was already long past sunsetwhen I came in sight of the

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palace, silhouetted black against the paleyellow of the sky. Weena had been
hugely delighted when I began to carryher, but after a while she desired
me to let her down, andran along by the side of me,
occasionally darting off on either hand topick 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 vasefor floral decoration. At least she utilized
them for that purpose, and thatreminds me. In changing my jacket,
I found the time traveler paused,put his hand into his pocket, and
silently placed two withered flowers, notunlike very large white mallows, upon the

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little table. Then he resumed hisnarrative, as the hush of the evening
crept over the world and we proceededover the hillcrest towards Wimbledon. Weena grew
tired and wanted to return to theHouse of gray Stone, But I pointed
out the distant pinnacles of the Palaceof Green Porcelain to her, and contrived
to make her understand that we wereseeking a refuge there from her fear.

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You know that great pause that comesupon things before the dusk, even the
breeze stops in the trees. Tome, there is always an air of
expectation about that evening stillness. Thesky was clear, remote and empty,
save for a few horizontal bars fardown in the sunset. Well that night,

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the expectation took the color of myfears. In that darkling calm,
my senses seemed eater, naturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel 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 waiting for the

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dark. In my excitement, Ifancied 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 inthe quiet, and the twilight deepened into
night. The clear blue of thedistance faded, and one star after another

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came out. The ground grew dimand the trees black. Weena's fears and
her fatigue grew upon her. Itook 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. So wewent down a long slope into a valley,

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and there, in the dimness Ialmost walked into a little river.
This I waited and went up onthe opposite side of the valley, past
a number of sleeping houses, andby a statue of fawn or some such
figure minus the head. Here toowere acacias. So far I had seen
nothing of the Morlocks. But itwas yet early in the night, and

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the darker hours before the old moonrose were still to come. From the
brow of the next hill, Isaw 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 very sore, I carefullylowered Weena from my shoulder. As I

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halted and sat down upon the turf, I could no longer see the palace
of green porcelain, and I wasin doubt of my direction. I looked
into the thickness of the wood andthought of what it might hide. Under
that dense tangle of branches. Onewould be out of sight of the stars,
even were there no other lurking danger, A danger I did not care

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to let my imagination loose upon therewould still be all the roots to stumble
over and the tree bowls to strikeagainst. I was very tired too,
after the excitements of the day,so I decided that I would not face
it, but would pass the nightupon the open hill. Weena, I

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was glad to find, was fastasleep. I carefully wrapped her in my
jacket and sat down beside her towait for the moonrise. The hillside was
quiet and deserted, but from theblack of the wood there came now and
then a stir of living things aboveme shone. The stars for the night
was very clear. I felt acertain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling.

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All the old constellations had gone fromthe sky. However, that slow
movement, which is imperceptible in ahundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged
them in unfamiliar groupings. But themilky way, it seemed to me,
was still the same tattered streamer ofstar dust as of yore. Southward,

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as I judged, it was avery bright red star that was new to
me. It was even more splendidthan our own green serious, and amid
all these scintillating points of light,one bright planet shone kindly and steadily,
like the face of an old friend. Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my

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own troubles and all the gravities ofterrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable
distance, and the slow, inevitabledrift of their movements out of the unknown
past into the unknown future. Ithought of the great processional cycle that the
pole of the Earth describes. Onlyforty times had that silent revolution occurred during

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all the years that I had traversed, And during these few revolutions, all
the activity, all the traditions,the complex organizations, the nations, languages,
literatures, aspirations, even the merememory of Man as I knew him,
had been swept out of existence.Instead, were these frail creatures who

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had forgotten their high ancestry, andthe white things of which I went in
terror. Then I thought of thegreat fear that was between the two species,
and for the first time, witha sudden shiver, came the clear
knowledge of what the meat I hadseen might be. Yet it was too

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horrible. I looked at little Weenasleeping beside me, her face white and
starlike under the stars, and forthwithdismissed the thought. Through that long night,
I held my mind off the morlocksas well as I could, and
whiled away the time by trying tofancy. I could find signs of the

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old constellations in the new confusion.The sky kept very clear, except for
a hazy cloud or so, nodoubt I dozed at times. Then,
as my vigil wore on, camea faintness in the eastward sky, like
the reflection of some colorless fire,and the old moon rose thin and peaked

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and white, and close behind andovertaking it and overflowing it. The dawn
came pale at first, and thengrowing pink and warm. No Morlocks had
approached us, indeed I had seennone upon the hill that night, and
in the confidence of renewed day.It almost seemed to me that my fear

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had been unreasonable. I stood upand found my foot with the loose heels,
swollen at the ankle, and painfull under the heel. So I
sat down again, took off myshoes and flung them away. I awakened
Weena, and we went down intothe wood, now green and pleasant instead
of black, and forbidding we foundsome fruit wherewith to break our fast.

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We soon met others of the daintyones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight,
as though there were no such thingin nature as the night. And
then I thought once more of themeat I had seen. I felt assured
now of what it was, andfrom the bottom of my heart I pitied
this last feeble rill from the greatflood of humanity. Clearly, at some

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time in the long ago of humandecay, the morlock's food had run short.
Possibly they had lived on rats andsuch like vermin. Even now,
man is far less discriminating and exclusivein his food than he was, far
less than any monkey. His prejudiceagainst human flesh is no deep seated instinct,

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and so these inhuman sons of men. I tried to look at the
thing in a scientific spirit. Afterall, they were less human and more
remote than our cannibal ancestors of threeor four thousand years ago. And the
intelligence that would have made this stateof things a torment had gone. Why

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should I trouble myself these eloi weremere fatted cattle, which the ant like
morlocks preserved and preyed upon, probablysaw to the breeding of. And there
was Weena dancing at my side.Then I tried to preserve myself from the
horror that was coming upon me byregarding it as a rigorous punishment of human

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selfishness. Man had been content tolive in ease and delight upon the labors
of his fellow man had taken necessityas his watchword an excuse, and in
the fullness of time, necessity hadcome home to him. I even tried
a Carlyle like scorn of this wretchedaristocracy in decay, But this attitude of

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mind was impossible. However great theirintellectual degradation, the eloy had kept too
much of the human form not toclaim my sympathy and to make me perforce
a sharer in their degradation and theirfear. I had at that time very
vague ideas as to the course Ishould pursue. My first was to secure

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some safe place of refuge, andto make myself such arms of metal or
stone as I could contrive that necessitywas immediate. In the next place,
I hoped to procure some means offire, 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 wantedto arrange some contrivance to break open the

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doors of bronze under the white sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram.
I had a persuasion that if Icould enter those doors and carry a
blaze of light before me, Ishould discover the time machine and escape.
I could not imagine the morlocks werestrong enough to move it far away,
Weena I had resolved to bring withme to our own time, and,

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turning such schemes over in my mind, I pursued our way towards the building
which my fancy had chosen as ourdwelling. End of Chapter seven