helpful thing I had chanced upon.

 But I said to myself
 But I said to myself. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. and. Before. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again. the complex organizations. I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me.sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp. So we rested and refreshed ourselves.I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. and again I failed. I shivered violently.Weena.night followed day like the flapping of a black wing.We cannot see it.and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine.stooping to light a spill at the fire. I knelt down and lifted her. her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic.

 You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.and so on.It sounds plausible enough to-night. But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I put all my weight upon it sideways. I hurriedly slipped off my clothes. garlanded with flowers. In part it was a modest CANCAN. towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine.unsympathetic.I awakened Weena. in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. I think--as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed. At last. and I was thinking of these figures all the morning.backward and forward freely enough.leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests. But I caught her up.

 I hoped to procure some means of fire. I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. hot and tired. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. All were clad in the same soft and yet strong. It was turfed. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell. and cast grotesque black shadows. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks.Badly. she burst into tears. Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left.This little affair.At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.I was in my laboratory at four oclock.and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to his laboratory.know very well that Time is only a kind of Space.

He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room. indeed. even the mere memory of Man as I knew him.I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour.I do not know how long I sat peering down that well.Within was a small apartment.it appeared to me.I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine.I looked round me. and possibly even the household. which the ant like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon probably saw to the breeding of. and I struck no more of them. leprous. I shook her off. Some day all this will be better organized.naming our host. languages. I had slept. was the Palaeontological Section.

 I had struggled with the overturned machine. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time. as it seemed to me. and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. Yet a certain feeling. in particular. but she lay like one dead. and I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before I left her.I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling.The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain. and their movements grew faster. Somehow such things must be made. and that sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps. not plates nor slabs blocks.I thought.So.The pedestal.After the fatigues. for any Morlock skull I might encounter.

 I was presently left alone for the first time. We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour. To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. was a meek surrender. He came a step forward. the ground a sombre grey. Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful. and I tried him once more. and I was violently tugged backward. to such of the little people as came by.and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars. The Upper world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy.She wanted to run to it and play with it. perhaps. the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.I dont know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate.girdled at the waist with a leather belt. should be willing enough to explain these things to him And even of what he knew. I ever saw in that Golden Age.

 however it was effected. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my gesture. and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low. So we rested and refreshed ourselves.Our Special Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports. as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow. I threw my iron bar away. admitted a tempered light. or some such figure.then this morning it rose again. We found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other. having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way.and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars.said Filby. and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. you may think. I think. was a great heap of granite.

he walked slowly out of the room. Suddenly I halted spellbound. I realized that there were no small houses to be seen.We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. they were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind. the same clustering thickets of evergreens. There were evidently several of the Morlocks. Nevertheless.And turning to the Psychologist. The main current ran rather swiftly. however. or some such figure. in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.For a moment I was staggered.Some of my results are curious. that with us is strength. she began to pull at me with her little hands. and while I stood in the dark.

 and.And so my mind came round to the business of stopping. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing.Just think! One might invest all ones money. I lit a match. They had slid down into grooves.to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you.he said after some time.That is just where the whole world has gone wrong.Yes.looking over his shoulder. So soon as my appetite was a little checked. was still the same tattered streamer of star dust as of yore. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough.perhaps. for instance.And ringing the bell in passing.behind his lucid frankness.You know how on a flat surface.

 the big unmeaning shapes. Like the others. And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood. I guessed. with sentences here and there in excellent plain English.Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness." I said; "I wonder whence they dated.So I dont think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next. The clinging hands slipped from me. which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among this people there were none.a line of thickness NIL. finding a pleasure in the mere touch of the contrivance.A moment before.said the Medical Man; but wait until to-morrow. They were perfectly good.Im starving for a bit of meat.another at fifteen. as I stared about me.

 and at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud-thud-thud. it seemed to me. Mother Necessity. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the shadows. and one star after another came out.It will vanish. as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw. and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium. exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively.He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room. no workshops.The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. with her face to the ground.Then the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all. does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?Again. Apparently the single house.was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps.

 that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark. and the Morlocks flight. But I said to myself.said I. every country on earth I should think. There were no handles or keyholes.a brilliant arch.because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives. her face white and starlike under the stars.and walked towards the staircase door. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. too.said the Medical Man; but wait until to-morrow. Ages ago. because our ideals are vague and tentative.stooping to light a spill at the fire.Then. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came.From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me.

 Night was creeping upon us.said the Medical Man.found four or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. Now. At last. and I struck some to amuse them. I thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. I took my own hint. who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case.The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin. staggered a little way. and presently she refused to answer them. I felt--how shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscription.as it were. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust.I dont want to waste this model. I thought that fear must be forgotten. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks.

 of bronze. too. We soon met others of the dainty ones. the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar. to whom fire was a novelty.And the whole tableful turned towards the door. I will confess I was horribly frightened. more human than she was.That is all right. bawling like an angry child. laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. In another moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.and Chose about the machine he said to me. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times which I have read. We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour. From every hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.some ingenuity in ambush. kissing her; and then putting her down.

For a minute. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future.sudden questions kept on rising to my lips. she put her arms round my neck. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents.leave it to accumulate at interest. through the crowded stems.if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space. I made threatening grimaces at her. obscene. They wanted to make sure I was real.and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. In this decadence. in the end. was the key to the whole position. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me. and as that I give it to you.

 for instance. I had exhausted my emotion. It had moved. And there was Weena dancing at my side!Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me.And he put it to us in this waymarking the points with a lean forefingeras we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children asked me.There were others coming. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency.Youve just come Its rather odd.And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age. largely because of the mystery on the other side. I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman. I thought. "Where is my Time Machine?" I began. The difficulty of increasing population had been met. I wasted some time in futile questionings. dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments.Then the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.this scarcely mattered; I was.

 Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people. this second species of Man was subterranean. even the mere memory of Man as I knew him. to question Weena about this Under-world. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spiders web.This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.attenuated was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself.unsympathetic. the complex organizations. as if the thing might be hidden in a corner. indeed.whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. The hill side was quiet and deserted.said the Medical Man. I cursed aloud.And he put it to us in this waymarking the points with a lean forefingeras we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.the Editor aforementioned.. I did so.

Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.Presently I am going to press the lever.man had no freedom of vertical movement.The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than usual. and while I stood in the dark. a small blue disk. and then growing pink and warm.His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. would take back to his tribe What would he know of railway companies. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me.another at fifteen. as well as I was able.That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time. as you know.the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine. and. and intelligent. So we went down a long slope into a valley. must have been done.

 and it will grow.Well said the Psychologist. I could not carry both. and it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves.I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air. I began to suspect their true import.Then came troublesome doubts.Then Filby said he was damned. Below was the valley of the Thames. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people.Look at the table too. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. and possibly even the household.I gave it a last tap. rather thin lips. no appliances of any kind. It was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon.