March 6, 2025 • 14 mins
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a classic science fiction novel that follows an unnamed scientist, known as the Time Traveller, who invents a machine that allows him to travel through time. He journeys to the distant future, arriving in the year 802,701, where he encounters two distinct races: the gentle, childlike Eloi and the sinister, underground-dwelling Morlocks. As he explores this strange future, he realizes the dark implications of humanity’s evolution. The novel explores themes of class struggle, the passage of time, and the fate of civilization, making it one of the most influential works in science fiction history.
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter six of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time Machine,
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
(00:24):
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
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.
(00:47):
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
intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason.
I remember creeping noiselessly into the Great Hall where the
(01:08):
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night. Weena
was among them, and feeling reassured by their presence. It
occurred to me even then that in the course of
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
(01:31):
that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And
on both these days I had the restless feeling of
one whose 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.
(01:52):
If only I had had a companion, it would have
been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even
to clambered 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 insecurity, perhaps that drove me further and
(02:15):
further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the southwestward
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
(02:37):
the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had
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
(03:00):
was growing late, and I had come upon the sight
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 Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that
my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a
(03:20):
piece of self deception to enable me to shirk by
another 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.
(03:40):
She danced beside me to the well, but when she
saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she
seemed 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
(04:02):
leak away. At first she watched me in amazement. Then
she gave 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
(04:24):
saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to
reassure her. Then 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 affected by means of metallic bars projecting from the
sides of the well, and these being adapted to the
(04:46):
needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself.
I was speedily cramped 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
(05:09):
my arms and back were presently acutely painful, I went
on clambering 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
(05:29):
sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive.
Everything save 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
(05:52):
my mind, I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief,
I 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
(06:15):
was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror
of a fall. 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.
(06:39):
Starting up in the darkness, I snatched at my matches,
and hastily striking one, 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 normally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils
(07:03):
of the abysmal fishes, and 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
(07:23):
and tunnels, from which their eyes 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
(07:46):
to myself, you are in for it now, 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
(08:08):
my light. The view I had of it was 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
(08:30):
by the by was very stuffy and oppressive, and the
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
(08:53):
the red joint. I saw. It was all very indistinct,
the heavy smell, the big, un meaning 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 wriggling red
(09:13):
spot in the blackness. I have thought since how particularly
ill 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.
(09:37):
At times I missed tobacco frightfully, even without enough matches.
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 these and
(10:02):
four safety matches that still remained to me. I 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,
(10:22):
and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing
the upper worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now,
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
(10:46):
of a crowd of these dreadful little beings about me.
I felt the box of matches in my hand being
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
(11:08):
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly. In
the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.
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,
(11:32):
and they made a queer laughing noise as they came
back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened.
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
(11:54):
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 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
(12:14):
and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce
imagine how nauseating the inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless
faces and great, lidless, pinkish gray eyes as they stared
in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay
to look, I promise you. I retreated again, and when
(12:36):
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
I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and as I
did so, my feet were grasp from behind, and I
(12:58):
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
up the shaft while they stayed peering and blinking up
at me. All but one little wretch, who followed me
(13:21):
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
my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle
against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
(13:45):
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.
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
(14:05):
others among the eloy Then for a time I was insensible.
End of Chapter six
Chapter six of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time Machine,
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
(00:24):
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
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.
(00:47):
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
intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason.
I remember creeping noiselessly into the Great Hall where the
(01:08):
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night. Weena
was among them, and feeling reassured by their presence. It
occurred to me even then that in the course of
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
(01:31):
that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And
on both these days I had the restless feeling of
one whose 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.
(01:52):
If only I had had a companion, it would have
been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even
to clambered 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 insecurity, perhaps that drove me further and
(02:15):
further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the southwestward
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
(02:37):
the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had
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
(03:00):
was growing late, and I had come upon the sight
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 Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that
my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a
(03:20):
piece of self deception to enable me to shirk by
another 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.
(03:40):
She danced beside me to the well, but when she
saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she
seemed 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
(04:02):
leak away. At first she watched me in amazement. Then
she gave 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
(04:24):
saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to
reassure her. Then 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 affected by means of metallic bars projecting from the
sides of the well, and these being adapted to the
(04:46):
needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself.
I was speedily cramped 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
(05:09):
my arms and back were presently acutely painful, I went
on clambering 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
(05:29):
sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive.
Everything save 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
(05:52):
my mind, I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief,
I 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
(06:15):
was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror
of a fall. 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.
(06:39):
Starting up in the darkness, I snatched at my matches,
and hastily striking one, 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 normally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils
(07:03):
of the abysmal fishes, and 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
(07:23):
and tunnels, from which their eyes 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
(07:46):
to myself, you are in for it now, 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
(08:08):
my light. The view I had of it was 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
(08:30):
by the by was very stuffy and oppressive, and the
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
(08:53):
the red joint. I saw. It was all very indistinct,
the heavy smell, the big, un meaning 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 wriggling red
(09:13):
spot in the blackness. I have thought since how particularly
ill 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.
(09:37):
At times I missed tobacco frightfully, even without enough matches.
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 these and
(10:02):
four safety matches that still remained to me. I 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,
(10:22):
and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing
the upper worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now,
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
(10:46):
of a crowd of these dreadful little beings about me.
I felt the box of matches in my hand being
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
(11:08):
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly. In
the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.
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,
(11:32):
and they made a queer laughing noise as they came
back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened.
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
(11:54):
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 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
(12:14):
and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce
imagine how nauseating the inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless
faces and great, lidless, pinkish gray eyes as they stared
in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay
to look, I promise you. I retreated again, and when
(12:36):
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
I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and as I
did so, my feet were grasp from behind, and I
(12:58):
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
up the shaft while they stayed peering and blinking up
at me. All but one little wretch, who followed me
(13:21):
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
my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle
against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
(13:45):
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.
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
(14:05):
others among the eloy Then for a time I was insensible.
End of Chapter six
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