From a5a886e08367000717501c95d125fdd8b415e404 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: freelw <“freelw81@qq.com“>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2025 11:27:52 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] update tools

---
 .gitignore                        |    6 +
 tools/pre_process/preprocess.py   |   14 +
 tools/pre_process/timemachine.txt | 3221 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 tools/vocab_builder/main.cpp      |   66 +
 tools/vocab_builder/makefile      |   24 +
 5 files changed, 3331 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 tools/pre_process/preprocess.py
 create mode 100644 tools/pre_process/timemachine.txt
 create mode 100644 tools/vocab_builder/main.cpp
 create mode 100644 tools/vocab_builder/makefile

diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index d4385bc..bd13656 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -14,3 +14,9 @@ vocab/fra_vocab_builder/tgt_vocab.txt
 vocab/fra_vocab_builder/src_vocab.txt
 backends/gpu/metal/metal-cpp/.DS_Store
 handwritten_recognition
+tools/vocab_builder/vocab.txt
+tools/vocab_builder/builder.dSYM/Contents/Resources/DWARF/builder
+tools/vocab_builder/builder.dSYM/Contents/Resources/Relocations/aarch64/builder.yml
+tools/vocab_builder/builder.dSYM/Contents/Info.plist
+tools/vocab_builder/builder
+tools/vocab_builder/builder.dSYM
diff --git a/tools/pre_process/preprocess.py b/tools/pre_process/preprocess.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc30ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/pre_process/preprocess.py
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+import re
+
+def get_timemachine():
+    with open("./timemachine.txt") as f:
+        return f.read()
+
+def preprocess(text):
+    """Defined in :numref:`sec_text-sequence`"""
+    return re.sub('[^A-Za-z]+', ' ', text).lower()
+
+if '__main__' == __name__:
+
+    with open("./timemachine_preprocessed.txt", "w") as f:
+        f.write(preprocess(get_timemachine()))
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tools/pre_process/timemachine.txt b/tools/pre_process/timemachine.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f32a11d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/pre_process/timemachine.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3221 @@
+The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells [1898]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
+was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
+twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
+fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
+lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
+passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
+caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
+luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully
+free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this
+way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we sat and lazily
+admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it)
+and his fecundity.
+
+'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
+ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for
+instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'
+
+'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?'
+said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
+
+'I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable
+ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You
+know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness _nil_,
+has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a
+mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.'
+
+'That is all right,' said the Psychologist.
+
+'Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
+real existence.'
+
+'There I object,' said Filby. 'Of course a solid body may exist. All
+real things--'
+
+'So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an _instantaneous_
+cube exist?'
+
+'Don't follow you,' said Filby.
+
+'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
+existence?'
+
+Filby became pensive. 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any
+real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have
+Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural
+infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
+incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions,
+three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.
+There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between
+the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that
+our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the
+latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.'
+
+'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight
+his cigar over the lamp; 'that ... very clear indeed.'
+
+'Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,'
+continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of
+cheerfulness. 'Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension,
+though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know
+they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. _There is
+no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space
+except that our consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish
+people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all
+heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?'
+
+'_I_ have not,' said the Provincial Mayor.
+
+'It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
+spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
+Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to
+three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some
+philosophical people have been asking why _three_ dimensions
+particularly--why not another direction at right angles to the other
+three?--and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry.
+Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York
+Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat
+surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of
+a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models
+of three dimensions they could represent one of four--if they could
+master the perspective of the thing. See?'
+
+'I think so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his
+brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one
+who repeats mystic words. 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after
+some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.
+
+'Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this
+geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results
+are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight
+years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at
+twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it
+were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned
+being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.
+
+'Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
+required for the proper assimilation of this, 'know very well that
+Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram,
+a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the
+movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night
+it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to
+here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the
+dimensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced
+such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along
+the Time-Dimension.'
+
+'But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, 'if
+Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why
+has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot
+we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?'
+
+The Time Traveller smiled. 'Are you sure we can move freely in
+Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
+and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two
+dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.'
+
+'Not exactly,' said the Medical Man. 'There are balloons.'
+
+'But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
+inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical
+movement.'
+
+'Still they could move a little up and down,' said the Medical Man.
+
+'Easier, far easier down than up.'
+
+'And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
+present moment.'
+
+'My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where
+the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the
+present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have
+no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
+velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel _down_
+if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.'
+
+'But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the Psychologist.
+'You _can_ move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot
+move about in Time.'
+
+'That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say
+that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling
+an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence:
+I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of
+course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any
+more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the
+ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this
+respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why
+should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or
+accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about
+and travel the other way?'
+
+'Oh, _this_,' began Filby, 'is all--'
+
+'Why not?' said the Time Traveller.
+
+'It's against reason,' said Filby.
+
+'What reason?' said the Time Traveller.
+
+'You can show black is white by argument,' said Filby, 'but you will
+never convince me.'
+
+'Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller. 'But now you begin to see
+the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four
+Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine--'
+
+'To travel through Time!' exclaimed the Very Young Man.
+
+'That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time,
+as the driver determines.'
+
+Filby contented himself with laughter.
+
+'But I have experimental verification,' said the Time Traveller.
+
+'It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the
+Psychologist suggested. 'One might travel back and verify the
+accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!'
+
+'Don't you think you would attract attention?' said the Medical Man.
+'Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.'
+
+'One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,'
+the Very Young Man thought.
+
+'In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go.
+The German scholars have improved Greek so much.'
+
+'Then there is the future,' said the Very Young Man. 'Just think!
+One might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate at
+interest, and hurry on ahead!'
+
+'To discover a society,' said I, 'erected on a strictly communistic
+basis.'
+
+'Of all the wild extravagant theories!' began the Psychologist.
+
+'Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until--'
+
+'Experimental verification!' cried I. 'You are going to verify
+_that_?'
+
+'The experiment!' cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.
+
+'Let's see your experiment anyhow,' said the Psychologist, 'though
+it's all humbug, you know.'
+
+The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly,
+and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly
+out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long
+passage to his laboratory.
+
+The Psychologist looked at us. 'I wonder what he's got?'
+
+'Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said the Medical Man, and
+Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but
+before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and
+Filby's anecdote collapsed.
+
+The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering
+metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very
+delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent
+crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that
+follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is an absolutely
+unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that
+were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with
+two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism.
+Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the
+table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon
+the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
+brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that
+the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair
+nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between
+the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking
+over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched
+him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left. The
+Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the
+alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however
+subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played
+upon us under these conditions.
+
+The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. 'Well?'
+said the Psychologist.
+
+'This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows
+upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus,
+'is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through
+time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there
+is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in
+some way unreal.' He pointed to the part with his finger. 'Also,
+here is one little white lever, and here is another.'
+
+The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
+'It's beautifully made,' he said.
+
+'It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when
+we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: 'Now I
+want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over,
+sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
+the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.
+Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will
+go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a
+good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy
+yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model,
+and then be told I'm a quack.'
+
+There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
+speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
+his finger towards the lever. 'No,' he said suddenly. 'Lend me your
+hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual's
+hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it
+was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine
+on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am
+absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of
+wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel
+was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became
+indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of
+faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished! Save
+for the lamp the table was bare.
+
+Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.
+
+The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked
+under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.
+'Well?' he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then,
+getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his
+back to us began to fill his pipe.
+
+We stared at each other. 'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you
+in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine
+has travelled into time?'
+
+'Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at
+the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the
+Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not
+unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)
+'What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he
+indicated the laboratory--'and when that is put together I mean to
+have a journey on my own account.'
+
+'You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?'
+said Filby.
+
+'Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know which.'
+
+After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. 'It must have
+gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.
+
+'Why?' said the Time Traveller.
+
+'Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it
+travelled into the future it would still be here all this time,
+since it must have travelled through this time.'
+
+'But,' I said, 'If it travelled into the past it would have been
+visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
+were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!'
+
+'Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
+impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.
+
+'Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: 'You
+think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold,
+you know, diluted presentation.'
+
+'Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. 'That's a
+simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's plain
+enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor
+can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of
+a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is
+travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than
+we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second,
+the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or
+one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in
+time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in
+which the machine had been. 'You see?' he said, laughing.
+
+We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the
+Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.
+
+'It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but
+wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.'
+
+'Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time
+Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the
+way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember
+vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette,
+the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but
+incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger
+edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before
+our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly
+been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally
+complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the
+bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better
+look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.
+
+'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you perfectly serious?
+Or is this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?'
+
+'Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp
+aloft, 'I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more
+serious in my life.'
+
+None of us quite knew how to take it.
+
+I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
+winked at me solemnly.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
+Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who
+are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round
+him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in
+ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and
+explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have
+shown _him_ far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his
+motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time
+Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we
+distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less
+clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things
+too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt
+quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting
+their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a
+nursery with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very
+much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and
+the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of
+our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,
+the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it
+suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the
+trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man,
+whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar
+thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out
+of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.
+
+The next Thursday I went again to Richmond--I suppose I was one of
+the Time Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found
+four or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical
+Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand
+and his watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller,
+and--'It's half-past seven now,' said the Medical Man. 'I suppose
+we'd better have dinner?'
+
+'Where's----?' said I, naming our host.
+
+'You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He
+asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not
+back. Says he'll explain when he comes.'
+
+'It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the Editor of a
+well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.
+
+The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself
+who had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the
+Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another--a quiet,
+shy man with a beard--whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my
+observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was
+some speculation at the dinner-table about the Time Traveller's
+absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit.
+The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist
+volunteered a wooden account of the 'ingenious paradox and trick' we
+had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition
+when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I
+was facing the door, and saw it first. 'Hallo!' I said. 'At last!'
+And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us.
+I gave a cry of surprise. 'Good heavens! man, what's the matter?'
+cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole tableful
+turned towards the door.
+
+He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and
+smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it
+seemed to me greyer--either with dust and dirt or because its colour
+had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown
+cut on it--a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn,
+as by intense suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway,
+as if he had been dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room.
+He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps.
+We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.
+
+He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a
+motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and
+pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good:
+for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile
+flickered across his face. 'What on earth have you been up to, man?'
+said the Doctor. The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. 'Don't let
+me disturb you,' he said, with a certain faltering articulation.
+'I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took
+it off at a draught. 'That's good,' he said. His eyes grew brighter,
+and a faint colour came into his cheeks. His glance flickered over
+our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm
+and comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling
+his way among his words. 'I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll
+come down and explain things ... Save me some of that mutton. I'm
+starving for a bit of meat.'
+
+He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
+was all right. The Editor began a question. 'Tell you presently,'
+said the Time Traveller. 'I'm--funny! Be all right in a minute.'
+
+He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again
+I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall,
+and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had
+nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the
+door closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered
+how he detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my
+mind was wool-gathering. Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent
+Scientist,' I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in
+headlines. And this brought my attention back to the bright
+dinner-table.
+
+'What's the game?' said the Journalist. 'Has he been doing the
+Amateur Cadger? I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist,
+and read my own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time
+Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else had
+noticed his lameness.
+
+The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical
+Man, who rang the bell--the Time Traveller hated to have servants
+waiting at dinner--for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his
+knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The
+dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while,
+with gaps of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his
+curiosity. 'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a
+crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. 'I feel
+assured it's this business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up
+the Psychologist's account of our previous meeting. The new guests
+were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. 'What _was_
+this time travelling? A man couldn't cover himself with dust by
+rolling in a paradox, could he?' And then, as the idea came home to
+him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in
+the Future? The Journalist too, would not believe at any price, and
+joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole
+thing. They were both the new kind of journalist--very joyous,
+irreverent young men. 'Our Special Correspondent in the Day
+after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was saying--or rather
+shouting--when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in
+ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained
+of the change that had startled me.
+
+'I say,' said the Editor hilariously, 'these chaps here say you have
+been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about
+little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?'
+
+The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a
+word. He smiled quietly, in his old way. 'Where's my mutton?' he
+said. 'What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'
+
+'Story!' cried the Editor.
+
+'Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller. 'I want something to
+eat. I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.
+Thanks. And the salt.'
+
+'One word,' said I. 'Have you been time travelling?'
+
+'Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his
+head.
+
+'I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the Editor.
+The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang
+it with his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been
+staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine.
+The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden
+questions kept on rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same
+with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by
+telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted his
+attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a tramp.
+The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time Traveller
+through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than
+usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of
+sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate away,
+and looked round us. 'I suppose I must apologize,' he said. 'I was
+simply starving. I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his
+hand for a cigar, and cut the end. 'But come into the smoking-room.
+It's too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' And ringing the
+bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.
+
+'You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?' he
+said to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new
+guests.
+
+'But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the Editor.
+
+'I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but
+I can't argue. I will,' he went on, 'tell you the story of what
+has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from
+interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like
+lying. So be it! It's true--every word of it, all the same. I was in
+my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then ... I've lived eight
+days ... such days as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly
+worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you.
+Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions! Is it agreed?'
+
+'Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed 'Agreed.' And
+with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth.
+He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man.
+Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only
+too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink--and, above all, my
+own inadequacy--to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
+attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white,
+sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the
+intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed
+the turns of his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the
+candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face
+of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees
+downward were illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each
+other. After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the
+Time Traveller's face.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+'I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
+Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
+workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of
+the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of
+it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday,
+when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the
+nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get
+remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It
+was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began
+its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put
+one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the
+saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels
+much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took
+the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,
+pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to
+reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round,
+I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For
+a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then 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 my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
+hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went
+dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing
+me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took 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 lever over to its extreme position. The
+night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment
+came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter
+and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night
+again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled
+my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.
+
+'I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
+travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling
+exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong
+motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
+smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a
+black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to
+fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,
+leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed
+the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.
+I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too
+fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that
+ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
+darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the
+intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her
+quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling
+stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the
+palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness;
+the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous
+color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak
+of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating
+band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a
+brighter circle flickering in the blue.
+
+'The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side
+upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me
+grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour,
+now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away.
+I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
+The whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing
+under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my
+speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun
+belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or
+less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and
+minute by minute the white 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 poignant now. They
+merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked
+indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
+account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a
+kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At
+first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but
+these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions
+grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and therewith a certain
+dread--until at last they took complete possession of me. What
+strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our
+rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to
+look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated
+before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about
+me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it
+seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the
+hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even
+through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so
+my mind came round to the business of stopping.
+
+'The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some
+substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long
+as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely
+mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour
+through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to
+a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into
+whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate
+contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical
+reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow
+myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the
+Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I
+was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an
+unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the
+risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.
+The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything,
+the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the
+feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told
+myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I
+resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over
+the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was
+flung headlong through the air.
+
+'There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have
+been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me,
+and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine.
+Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the
+confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what
+seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron
+bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were
+dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The
+rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove
+along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.
+"Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable
+years to see you."
+
+'Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
+looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
+stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
+downpour. But all else 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. It was of white
+marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,
+instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so
+that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of
+bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
+towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the
+faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn,
+and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood
+looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an
+hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it
+denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and
+saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was
+lightening with the promise of the sun.
+
+'I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full
+temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when
+that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have
+happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?
+What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had
+developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly
+powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more
+dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness--a foul creature to
+be incontinently slain.
+
+'Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate
+parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping
+in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic
+fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to
+readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the
+thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like
+the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue
+of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into
+nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and
+distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out
+in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I
+felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in
+the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear
+grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again
+grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under
+my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One
+hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
+in attitude to mount again.
+
+'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
+looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
+future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer
+house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft 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 of men running. One of
+these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon
+which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--perhaps
+four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a
+leather belt. Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish
+which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his
+head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm
+the air was.
+
+'He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
+indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more
+beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which we used
+to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence.
+I took my hands from the machine.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
+thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
+eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
+once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and
+spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
+
+'There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
+eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
+addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was
+too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my
+ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then
+touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my
+back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was
+nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in
+these pretty little people that inspired confidence--a graceful
+gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so
+frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them
+about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I
+saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily
+then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto
+forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the
+little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my
+pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of
+communication.
+
+'And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some
+further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness.
+Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the
+neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the
+face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small,
+with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a
+point. The eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on
+my part--I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the
+interest I might have expected in them.
+
+'As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood
+round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I
+began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself.
+Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the
+sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and
+white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the
+sound of thunder.
+
+'For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
+plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were
+these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me.
+You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight
+Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in
+knowledge, art, everything. 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, in fact, if I had come from
+the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended
+upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features.
+A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt
+that I had built the Time Machine in vain.
+
+'I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering
+of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so
+and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of
+beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.
+The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they
+were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging
+them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who
+have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and
+wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then
+someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the
+nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble,
+which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my
+astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I
+went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a
+profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
+merriment, to my mind.
+
+'The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal
+dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
+little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me
+shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw
+over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and
+flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number
+of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps
+across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if
+wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine
+them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the
+turf among the rhododendrons.
+
+'The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did
+not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw
+suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and
+it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn.
+Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we
+entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking
+grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an
+eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs,
+in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.
+
+'The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
+brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed
+with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered
+light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white
+metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I
+judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply
+channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length
+were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised
+perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.
+Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange,
+but for the most part they were strange.
+
+'Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions.
+Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do
+likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the
+fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into
+the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to
+follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I
+surveyed the hall at my leisure.
+
+'And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
+The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical
+pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung
+across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that
+the corner of the marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless,
+the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were,
+perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of
+them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with
+interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating.
+All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.
+
+'Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote
+future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite
+of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I
+found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the
+Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;
+one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was
+there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk--was especially good,
+and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange
+fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to
+perceive their import.
+
+'However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
+now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to
+make a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of
+mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a
+convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began
+a series of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some
+considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts
+met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but
+presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention
+and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business
+at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the
+exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount
+of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children,
+and persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at
+least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and
+even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little people
+soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I
+determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in
+little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses I found
+they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more
+easily fatigued.
+
+'A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
+their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of
+astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop
+examining me and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my
+conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that
+almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is
+odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people. I
+went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as
+my hunger was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men
+of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and
+laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly
+way, leave me again to my own devices.
+
+'The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great
+hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun.
+At first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely
+different from the world I had known--even the flowers. The big
+building I had left was situated on the slope of a broad river
+valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present
+position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a
+mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this
+our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred
+and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little
+dials of my machine recorded.
+
+'As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
+help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I
+found the world--for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for
+instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of
+aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled
+heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like
+plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown about
+the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict
+remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not
+determine. It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have
+a very strange experience--the first intimation of a still stranger
+discovery--but of that I will speak in its proper place.
+
+'Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I
+rested for a while, I realized that there were no small houses to be
+seen. Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household,
+had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like
+buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such
+characteristic features of our own English landscape, had
+disappeared.
+
+'"Communism," said I to myself.
+
+'And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the
+half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash,
+I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft
+hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem
+strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything
+was so strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and
+in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the
+sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. And
+the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their
+parents. I judged, then, that the children of that time were
+extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found afterwards
+abundant verification of my opinion.
+
+'Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, 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, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of
+occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical
+force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing
+becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where
+violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less
+necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient family,
+and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their
+children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even
+in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I
+must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to
+appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.
+
+'While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by
+a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in
+a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then
+resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings
+towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
+miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a
+strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
+
+'There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize,
+corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered
+in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of
+griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of
+our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and
+fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the
+horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal
+bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in
+which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already
+spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated
+greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. Here and there rose
+a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and
+there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There
+were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of
+agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.
+
+'So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had
+seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation
+was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a
+half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)
+
+'It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.
+The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the
+first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social
+effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think,
+it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need;
+security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the
+conditions of life--the true civilizing process that makes life more
+and more secure--had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a
+united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are
+now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and
+carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!
+
+'After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still
+in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but
+a little department of the field of human disease, but even so,
+it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our
+agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and
+cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the
+greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our
+favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by
+selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless
+grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed
+of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague
+and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature,
+too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will
+be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the
+current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent,
+educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster
+towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully
+we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit
+our human needs.
+
+'This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done
+indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine
+had leaped. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or
+fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers;
+brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of
+preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I
+saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay. And I
+shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction
+and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.
+
+'Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in
+splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them
+engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social
+nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all
+that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It
+was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of
+a social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been
+met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.
+
+'But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to
+the change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is
+the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom:
+conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and
+the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the
+loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and
+decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that
+arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring,
+parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in
+the imminent dangers of the young. _Now_, where are these imminent
+dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against
+connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion
+of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us
+uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant
+life.
+
+'I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of
+intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my
+belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes
+Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had
+used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which
+it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.
+
+'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
+restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.
+Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary
+to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and
+the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even be
+hindrances--to a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance
+and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out
+of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of
+war or solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting
+disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For
+such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as
+the strong, are indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they
+are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there
+was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw
+was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy
+of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the
+conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph which
+began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in
+security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor
+and decay.
+
+'Even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had almost died
+in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to
+sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and
+no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented
+inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and
+necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful
+grindstone broken at last!
+
+'As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this
+simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world--mastered
+the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they
+had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well,
+and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.
+That would account for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my
+explanation, and plausible enough--as most wrong theories are!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+'As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the
+full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver
+light in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move
+about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the
+chill of the night. I determined to descend and find where I could
+sleep.
+
+'I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to
+the figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing
+distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see
+the silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron
+bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn.
+I looked at the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency.
+"No," said I stoutly to myself, "that was not the lawn."
+
+'But it _was_ the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was
+towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came
+home to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!
+
+'At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of
+losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.
+The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could
+feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. In another
+moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping
+strides down the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost
+no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a
+warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was saying
+to myself: "They have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes
+out of the way." Nevertheless, I ran with all my might. All the
+time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread,
+I knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the
+machine was removed out of my reach. My breath came with pain. I
+suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the
+little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young
+man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the
+machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none
+answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit
+world.
+
+'When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace
+of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the
+empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it
+furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then
+stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered
+the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in
+the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my
+dismay.
+
+'I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
+the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of
+their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed
+me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose
+intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt
+assured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate,
+the machine could not have moved in time. The attachment of the
+levers--I will show you the method later--prevented any one from
+tampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved,
+and was hid, only in space. But then, where could it be?
+
+'I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running
+violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx,
+and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a
+small deer. I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes
+with my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding
+from the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of
+mind, I went down to the great building of stone. The big hall was
+dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell
+over one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a
+match and went on past the dusty curtains, of which I have told you.
+
+'There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon
+which, perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I
+have no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming
+suddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the
+splutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches.
+"Where is my Time Machine?" I began, bawling like an angry child,
+laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. It must have
+been very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely
+frightened. When I saw them standing round me, it came into my head
+that I was doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do
+under the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear.
+For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear
+must be forgotten.
+
+'Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people
+over in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again,
+out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little
+feet running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all
+I did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected
+nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from
+my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved
+to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory
+of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of
+looking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moon-lit
+ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last,
+of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute
+wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when
+I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping
+round me on the turf within reach of my arm.
+
+'I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how
+I had got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion
+and despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain,
+reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the
+face. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could
+reason with myself. "Suppose the worst?" I said. "Suppose the
+machine altogether lost--perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to be
+calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear
+idea of the method of my loss, and the means of getting materials
+and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make another." That
+would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, after
+all, it was a beautiful and curious world.
+
+'But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must
+be calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force
+or cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about
+me, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and
+travel-soiled. The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal
+freshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went about
+my business, I found myself wondering at my intense excitement
+overnight. I made a careful examination of the ground about the
+little lawn. I wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as
+well as I was able, to such of the little people as came by. They
+all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, some
+thought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task in
+the world to keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was
+a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger
+was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity.
+The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, about
+midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet
+where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
+There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow
+footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed
+my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said,
+of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep
+framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. The
+pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found them
+discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,
+but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I supposed, opened
+from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no very
+great mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside that
+pedestal. But how it got there was a different problem.
+
+'I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
+and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned
+smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then,
+pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open
+it. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I
+don't know how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were
+to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman--it is
+how she would look. They went off as if they had received the last
+possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next,
+with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel
+ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and
+I tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper
+got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by
+the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him
+towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his
+face, and all of a sudden I let him go.
+
+'But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze
+panels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit,
+I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have been
+mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and
+hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the
+verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people
+must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
+either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the
+slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down
+to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am too
+Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years,
+but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours--that is another matter.
+
+'I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the
+bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If you
+want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they
+mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their
+bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as
+you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a
+puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this
+world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses
+at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all." Then
+suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought
+of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future
+age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made
+myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a
+man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not help
+myself. I laughed aloud.
+
+'Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little
+people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had
+something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt
+tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no
+concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course
+of a day or two things got back to the old footing. I made what
+progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my
+explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or
+their language was excessively simple--almost exclusively composed
+of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any,
+abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their
+sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to
+convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined
+to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze
+doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory,
+until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural
+way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a
+circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.
+
+'So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant
+richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the
+same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material
+and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same
+blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns. Here and there water shone like
+silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and
+so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which
+presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain
+circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth.
+One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my
+first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously
+wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by
+the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness,
+I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection
+with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound:
+a thud--thud--thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I
+discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of
+air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the
+throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at
+once sucked swiftly out of sight.
+
+'After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers
+standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was
+often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above
+a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong
+suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose
+true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to
+associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an
+obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.
+
+'And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and
+bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my
+time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and
+coming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail
+about building, and social arrangements, and so forth. But while
+such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is
+contained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to
+a real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive the
+tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take
+back to his tribe! What would he know of railway companies, of
+social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the Parcels
+Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least,
+should be willing enough to explain these things to him! And even of
+what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either
+apprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a negro
+and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval between
+myself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which was
+unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general
+impression of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very
+little of the difference to your mind.
+
+'In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of
+crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
+that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere
+beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I
+deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely
+defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make
+a further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm
+among this people there were none.
+
+'I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an
+automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure.
+Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The
+several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great
+dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no
+appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant
+fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though
+undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow
+such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige
+of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign
+of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing
+gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful
+fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things
+were kept going.
+
+'Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what,
+had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For
+the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too,
+those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt--how shall
+I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and
+there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others
+made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well,
+on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight
+Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to
+me!
+
+'That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort. It happened that, as I
+was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of
+them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main
+current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate
+swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange
+deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the
+slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which
+was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedly
+slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I
+caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of
+the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of
+seeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a low
+estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her.
+In that, however, I was wrong.
+
+'This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little
+woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre
+from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and
+presented me with a big garland of flowers--evidently made for me
+and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had
+been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my
+appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little
+stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
+creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have
+done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did
+the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was
+Weena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed
+appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship
+which lasted a week, and ended--as I will tell you!
+
+'She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She
+tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about
+it went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last,
+exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems
+of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come
+into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress
+when I left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting
+were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much
+trouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow,
+a very great comfort. I thought it was mere childish affection that
+made her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did not clearly know
+what I had inflicted upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too
+late did I clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely
+seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she
+cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return
+to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of
+coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold
+so soon as I came over the hill.
+
+'It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the
+world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the
+oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made
+threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she
+dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness
+to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate
+emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered then,
+among other things, that these little people gathered into the great
+houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a
+light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. I never found
+one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark.
+Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that
+fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away
+from these slumbering multitudes.
+
+'It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me
+triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including
+the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm.
+But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been
+the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had
+been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and
+that sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.
+I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal
+had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again,
+but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour
+when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is
+colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down
+into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the
+palace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and see the
+sunrise.
+
+'The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor
+of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky
+black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.
+And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times,
+as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw
+a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the
+hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some
+dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them.
+It seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still
+indistinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill,
+uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. I doubted
+my eyes.
+
+'As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on
+and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned
+the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were
+mere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts," I
+said; "I wonder whence they dated." For a queer notion of Grant
+Allen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and
+leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with
+them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight
+Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four
+at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these
+figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my
+head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal
+I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine.
+But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were
+soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.
+
+'I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather
+of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun
+was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that
+the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people,
+unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin,
+forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into
+the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze
+with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had
+suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the
+sun was very much hotter than we know it.
+
+'Well, one very hot morning--my fourth, 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, there happened this strange thing:
+Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery,
+whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone.
+By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first
+impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from
+light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I
+halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against
+the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.
+
+'The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched
+my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was
+afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which
+humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I
+remembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to
+some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my
+voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched
+something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something
+white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a
+queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar
+manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered
+against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was
+hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.
+
+'My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a
+dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there
+was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it
+went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it
+ran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After an
+instant's pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could
+not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I
+came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told
+you, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me.
+Could this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and,
+looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large
+bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made
+me shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was clambering down
+the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot
+and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then the
+light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it
+dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster had
+disappeared.
+
+'I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for
+some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I
+had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that
+Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two
+distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were
+not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached,
+obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir
+to all the ages.
+
+'I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an
+underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And
+what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly
+balanced organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity
+of the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there,
+at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling
+myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there
+I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I
+was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful
+Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the
+daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging
+flowers at her as he ran.
+
+'They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned
+pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form
+to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried
+to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more
+visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my
+matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about
+the well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to
+go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But my mind was
+already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and
+sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these
+wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to
+say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the
+fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion
+towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.
+
+'Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was
+subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which
+made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome
+of a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was
+the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the
+dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then,
+those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are
+common features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.
+And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty
+yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
+carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theory
+of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.
+
+'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
+these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of
+ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in
+fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its
+ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in
+this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the
+comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible
+that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of this
+splitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate the
+shape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that it
+fell far short of the truth.
+
+'At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed
+clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present
+merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and
+the Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will
+seem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible!--and yet even
+now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is
+a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental
+purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in
+London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are
+subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they
+increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had
+increased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the
+sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever
+larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of
+its time therein, till, in the end--! Even now, 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, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to
+the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf
+between them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leading
+to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the
+surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the
+prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same
+widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher
+educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations
+towards refined habits on the part of the rich--will make that
+exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage
+which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines
+of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end,
+above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort
+and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting
+continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they
+were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little
+of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused,
+they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were
+so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in
+the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as
+well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in
+their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it seemed to
+me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally
+enough.
+
+'The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different
+shape in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and
+general co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real
+aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical
+conclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been
+simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the
+fellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had
+no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. My
+explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the
+most plausible one. But even on this supposition the balanced
+civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed
+its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect
+security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of
+degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and
+intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had
+happened to the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what
+I had seen of the Morlocks--that, by the by, was the name by which
+these creatures were called--I could imagine that the modification
+of the human type was even far more profound than among the "Eloi,"
+the beautiful race that I already knew.
+
+'Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time
+Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if
+the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And
+why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have
+said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was
+disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and
+presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the
+topic was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little
+harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my
+own, I ever saw in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased
+abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only concerned in
+banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes.
+And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I
+solemnly burned a match.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+'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 felt
+a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the
+half-bleached colour 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.
+
+'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 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 that had replaced the old, might be
+more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of
+one who 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. If only I
+had had a companion it would have been different. But I was so
+horribly alone, and even to clamber 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 further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the
+south-westward 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 the palaces
+or ruins I knew, and the facade had an Oriental look: the face
+of it having the lustre, 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 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 piece of self-deception, to enable
+me to shirk, by another day, an 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. 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 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
+saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her.
+Then I had 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 effected by means of metallic bars projecting from
+the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the 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 my arms and
+back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down the
+sheer descent with as quick a motion 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 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 Under-world alone. But even while
+I turned this over in 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 loophole 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 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. 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 abnormally large and
+sensitive, just as are the pupils 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 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 Over-world 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 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 to 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 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, 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 the red
+joint I saw. It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big
+unmeaning 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 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--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 teeth; these, and
+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, 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 odour. I
+fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those 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
+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, 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 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,
+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, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine
+how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless faces
+and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their
+blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise
+you: I retreated again, and when my second match had ended, I struck
+my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening
+into the shaft. I lay 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 grasped from behind, and I
+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 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
+felt all the sensations of 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
+others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+'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 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 element in the sickening quality of
+the Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I
+loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man 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 first
+incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now
+such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights
+might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer
+interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at
+least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world 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 favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their
+mechanical servants: but 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 the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable
+generations, had come at last to find the daylit 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
+paws 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, man had thrust his brother man out of
+the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back
+changed! Already the Eloi 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 seen in the Under-world.
+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 helpless the little people 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
+paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend
+myself. Without further delay 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 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 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 practicable to such dexterous
+climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, 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 south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or
+eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. 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 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 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 Traveller 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 the hush of 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 grey 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. 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 the expectation took the colour of my
+fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally
+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 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, and one star after another
+came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's 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. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and
+there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I
+waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number
+of sleeping houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure,
+_minus_ the head. Here too were acacias. So far I 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 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 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-boles to strike against.
+
+'I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I
+decided that I would not face it, but 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
+hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood
+there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone 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 lifetimes, had long since
+rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But 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 Sirius.
+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 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 great
+precessional 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 these few revolutions all the activity,
+all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations,
+languages, literatures, aspirations, 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, 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 starlike under the stars, and
+forthwith dismissed the thought.
+
+'Through 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 a faintness in the eastward
+sky, like the reflection of some colourless 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, 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.
+
+'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 was no such
+thing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the
+meat that 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 Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on
+rats and such-like vermin. 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, 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 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 labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+'I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about
+noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass
+remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
+fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high
+upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I
+was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged
+Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then--though
+I never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, or
+might be happening, to the living things in the sea.
+
+'The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
+porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
+unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might
+help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea of
+writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I
+fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so
+human.
+
+'Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we
+found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many
+side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.
+The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of
+miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then
+I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall,
+what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized
+by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the
+fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay
+beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had
+dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn
+away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a
+Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the
+side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away
+the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own
+time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair
+preservation of some of their contents.
+
+'Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South
+Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section,
+and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the
+inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and
+had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine
+hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if
+with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and
+there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare
+fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the
+cases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks as
+I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our
+footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping
+glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very
+quietly took my hand and stood beside me.
+
+'And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an
+intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it
+presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a
+little from my mind.
+
+'To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain
+had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology;
+possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me,
+at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more
+interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.
+Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the
+first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a
+block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find
+no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had
+deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a
+train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery,
+though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had
+little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on
+down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had
+entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural
+history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A
+few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed
+animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a
+brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that,
+because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by
+which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we
+came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly
+ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the
+end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the
+ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which suggested that
+originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in
+my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of
+big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some
+still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for
+mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as
+for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make
+only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if
+I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of
+powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.
+
+'Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she
+startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have
+noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It
+may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum
+was built into the side of a hill.--ED.] The end I had come in at
+was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As
+you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows,
+until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a London house
+before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went
+slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent
+upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until
+Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that
+the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and
+then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant
+and its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it
+appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My
+sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that.
+I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of
+machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the
+afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means
+of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the
+gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had
+heard down the well.
+
+'I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her
+and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike
+those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this
+lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly
+Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged
+the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a
+minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than
+sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I
+longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may
+think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it was
+impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my
+disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to
+slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained
+me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I
+heard.
+
+'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that
+gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first
+glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags.
+The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I
+presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had
+long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left
+them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic
+clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I
+might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition.
+But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the
+enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting
+paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly
+of the _Philosophical Transactions_ and my own seventeen papers upon
+physical optics.
+
+'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have
+been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little
+hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had
+collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every
+unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases,
+I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were
+perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. "Dance,"
+I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed
+against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict
+museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge
+delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling
+_The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a
+modest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far
+as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally
+inventive, as you know.
+
+'Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped
+the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for
+me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far
+unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed
+jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed.
+I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass
+accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the
+universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive,
+perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a
+sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil
+Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions
+of years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that
+it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame--was, in
+fact, an excellent candle--and I put it in my pocket. I found no
+explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze
+doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had
+chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.
+
+'I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would
+require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
+the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of
+arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a
+sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised
+best against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols,
+and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many were of some
+new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder
+there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was
+charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the
+specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols--Polynesian,
+Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think.
+And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon
+the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly
+took my fancy.
+
+'As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery
+after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes
+mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
+suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the
+merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite
+cartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed the case with joy. Then
+came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery,
+I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in
+waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came.
+Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from
+their presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should
+have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and
+(as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together
+into non-existence.
+
+'It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court
+within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we
+rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider
+our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible
+hiding-place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little
+now. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of
+all defences against the Morlocks--I had matches! I had the camphor
+in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that
+the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,
+protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the
+Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But
+now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards
+those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them,
+largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never
+impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of
+iron not altogether inadequate for the work.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+'We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above
+the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the
+next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods
+that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as
+far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep
+in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I
+gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms
+full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had
+anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from
+sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the
+wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped,
+fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending
+calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me
+onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was
+feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the
+Morlocks with it.
+
+'While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim
+against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was
+scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from
+their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather
+less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare
+hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer
+resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could
+contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was
+evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should
+have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down.
+And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind
+by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this
+proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering
+our retreat.
+
+'I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must
+be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's
+heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by
+dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.
+Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to
+widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with
+the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In
+this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on
+the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were
+an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.
+
+'She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have
+cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up,
+and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the
+wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking
+back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my
+heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a
+curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed
+at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very
+black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as
+my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to
+avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of
+remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I struck none of
+my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my
+little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.
+
+'For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet,
+the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the
+throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a
+pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more
+distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had
+heard in the Under-world. There were evidently several of the
+Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another
+minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena
+shivered violently, and became quite still.
+
+'It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did
+so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the
+darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the
+same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands,
+too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.
+Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the
+white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I hastily took
+a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon
+as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying
+clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.
+With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to
+breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground,
+and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the
+shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of
+the stir and murmur of a great company!
+
+'She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder
+and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realization. In
+manoeuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about
+several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction
+lay my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the
+Palace of Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to
+think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp
+where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy
+bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began
+collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness
+round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.
+
+'The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so,
+two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.
+One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I
+felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of
+dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece
+of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed
+how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival
+on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So,
+instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began
+leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking
+smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my
+camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I
+tried what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could
+not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.
+
+'Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have
+made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in
+the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I
+felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was
+full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just
+to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had
+their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily
+felt in my pocket for the match-box, and--it had gone! Then they
+gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had
+happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness
+of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of
+burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms,
+and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to
+feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in
+a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt
+little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my
+hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled
+up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short,
+I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the
+succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment
+I was free.
+
+'The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard
+fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I
+determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my
+back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was
+full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices
+seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements
+grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood glaring at the
+blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were
+afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The
+darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the
+Morlocks about me--three battered at my feet--and then I recognized,
+with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an
+incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the
+wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.
+As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap
+of starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I
+understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was
+growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks'
+flight.
+
+'Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through
+the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning
+forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for
+Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the
+explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little
+time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the
+Morlocks' path. It was a close race. 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. But at last I emerged upon a small open
+space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and
+past me, and went on straight into the fire!
+
+'And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of
+all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright
+as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock
+or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was
+another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already
+writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of
+fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled
+by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against
+each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their
+blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of
+fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more.
+But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the
+hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured
+of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck
+no more of them.
+
+'Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting
+loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one
+time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures
+would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the
+fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the
+fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about
+the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of
+Weena. But Weena was gone.
+
+'At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this
+strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and
+making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat
+on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and
+through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they
+belonged to another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three
+Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows
+of my fists, trembling as I did so.
+
+'For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare.
+I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat
+the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and
+wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to
+rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw
+Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the
+flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the
+streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening
+tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures,
+came the white light of the day.
+
+'I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was
+plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I
+cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the
+awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was
+almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about
+me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind
+of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out
+through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that
+I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the
+remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and
+moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet
+and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still
+pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time
+Machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as
+lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death
+of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this
+old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an
+actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely
+again--terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of
+this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing
+that was pain.
+
+'But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning
+sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose
+matches. The box must have leaked before it was lost.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+'About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of
+yellow metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of
+my arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and
+could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here
+was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same
+splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river
+running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful
+people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some were bathing
+in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave
+me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the landscape rose the
+cupolas above the ways to the Under-world. I understood now what all
+the beauty of the Over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their
+day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the
+cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And
+their end was the same.
+
+'I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had
+been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly
+towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and
+permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come
+to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost
+absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and
+comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that
+perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social
+question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.
+
+'It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility
+is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal
+perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism.
+Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are
+useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no
+need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have
+to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
+
+'So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his
+feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.
+But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical
+perfection--absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the
+feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become
+disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a
+few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The
+Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect,
+still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained
+perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human
+character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they
+turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it
+in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven
+Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit
+could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I
+give it to you.
+
+'After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and
+in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm
+sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon
+my theorizing passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my
+own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and
+refreshing sleep.
+
+'I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being
+caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on
+down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one
+hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.
+
+'And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal
+of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid
+down into grooves.
+
+'At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.
+
+'Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner
+of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket.
+So here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the
+White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost
+sorry not to use it.
+
+'A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.
+For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.
+Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the
+bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it
+had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that
+the Morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in
+their dim way to grasp its purpose.
+
+'Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere
+touch of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The
+bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang.
+I was in the dark--trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I
+chuckled gleefully.
+
+'I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards
+me. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on
+the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one
+little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light
+only on the box.
+
+'You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were
+close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at
+them with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the
+machine. Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had
+simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and
+at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. One,
+indeed, they almost got away from me. As it slipped from my hand,
+I had to butt in the dark with my head--I could hear the Morlock's
+skull ring--to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in
+the forest, I think, this last scramble.
+
+'But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging
+hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes.
+I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already
+described.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+'I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes
+with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the
+saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite
+time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite
+unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials
+again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records
+days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and
+another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers,
+I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I
+came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was
+sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into
+futurity.
+
+'As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of
+things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though I was
+still travelling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession
+of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace,
+returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much
+at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower,
+and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed
+to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over
+the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared
+across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the
+sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set--it
+simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more
+red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars,
+growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of
+light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very
+large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with
+a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At
+one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again,
+but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this
+slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal
+drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun,
+even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously,
+for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse
+my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the
+thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a
+mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a
+desolate beach grew visible.
+
+'I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.
+The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black,
+and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale
+white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and
+south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by
+the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The
+rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of
+life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation
+that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It
+was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the
+lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual
+twilight.
+
+'The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away
+to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the
+wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of
+wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a
+gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving
+and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was
+a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a
+sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing
+very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of
+mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied
+than it is now.
+
+'Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a
+thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into
+the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The
+sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself
+more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that,
+quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving
+slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous
+crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
+with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws
+swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling,
+and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic
+front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses,
+and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see
+the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it
+moved.
+
+'As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt
+a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
+brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
+immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught
+something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a
+frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna
+of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes
+were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with
+appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime,
+were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and
+I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was
+still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I
+stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the
+sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
+
+'I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over
+the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt
+Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring
+monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous
+plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an
+appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same
+red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the
+same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in
+and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward
+sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.
+
+'So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a
+thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate,
+watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller
+in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At
+last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of
+the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling
+heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of
+crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green
+liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with
+white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again
+came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay
+under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating
+crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the
+sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse
+of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still
+unfrozen.
+
+'I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A
+certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the
+machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green
+slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A
+shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded
+from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about
+upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I
+judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was
+merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed
+to me to twinkle very little.
+
+'Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun
+had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I
+saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this
+blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that
+an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was
+passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be
+the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I
+really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to
+the earth.
+
+'The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening
+gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air
+increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and
+whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent?
+It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of
+man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,
+the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over.
+As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant,
+dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At
+last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of
+the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a
+moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping
+towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All
+else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.
+
+'A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote
+to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I
+shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow
+in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to
+recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return
+journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing
+upon the shoal--there was no mistake now that it was a moving
+thing--against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the
+size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles
+trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering
+blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I
+was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote
+and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+'So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon
+the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was
+resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with
+greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and
+flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again
+the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
+These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the
+million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize
+our own pretty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back
+to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower.
+Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently,
+now, I slowed the mechanism down.
+
+'I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told
+you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs.
+Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me,
+like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when
+she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to
+be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
+end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost,
+and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
+Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed
+like a flash.
+
+'Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
+laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got
+off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several
+minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was
+my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept
+there, and the whole thing have been a dream.
+
+'And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east
+corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the
+north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the
+exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White
+Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.
+
+'For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came
+through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still
+painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_
+on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and
+looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I
+heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated--I felt so
+sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the
+door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am
+telling you the story.
+
+'I know,' he said, after a pause, 'that all this will be absolutely
+incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here
+to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces
+and telling you these strange adventures.'
+
+He looked at the Medical Man. 'No. I cannot expect you to believe
+it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the
+workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our
+race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its
+truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking
+it as a story, what do you think of it?'
+
+He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
+with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary
+stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the
+carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face, and looked
+round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of
+colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the
+contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end
+of his cigar--the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The
+others, as far as I remember, were motionless.
+
+The Editor stood up with a sigh. 'What a pity it is you're not
+a writer of stories!' he said, putting his hand on the Time
+Traveller's shoulder.
+
+'You don't believe it?'
+
+'Well----'
+
+'I thought not.'
+
+The Time Traveller turned to us. 'Where are the matches?' he said.
+He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. 'To tell you the truth
+... I hardly believe it myself.... And yet...'
+
+His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers
+upon the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his
+pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his
+knuckles.
+
+The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers.
+'The gynaeceum's odd,' he said. The Psychologist leant forward to
+see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
+
+'I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one,' said the Journalist.
+'How shall we get home?'
+
+'Plenty of cabs at the station,' said the Psychologist.
+
+'It's a curious thing,' said the Medical Man; 'but I certainly don't
+know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?'
+
+The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: 'Certainly not.'
+
+'Where did you really get them?' said the Medical Man.
+
+The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who
+was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. 'They were put
+into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.' He stared
+round the room. 'I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you
+and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I
+ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all
+only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at
+times--but I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
+where did the dream come from? ... I must look at that machine. If
+there is one!'
+
+He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through
+the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
+light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and
+askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering
+quartz. Solid to the touch--for I put out my hand and felt the rail
+of it--and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
+grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.
+
+The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand
+along the damaged rail. 'It's all right now,' he said. 'The story I
+told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the
+cold.' He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we
+returned to the smoking-room.
+
+He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his
+coat. The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain
+hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he
+laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling
+good night.
+
+I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a 'gaudy lie.'
+For my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was
+so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
+lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go
+next day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the
+laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
+The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the
+Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the
+squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the
+wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer
+reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to
+meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me
+in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small
+camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when
+he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. 'I'm frightfully busy,'
+said he, 'with that thing in there.'
+
+'But is it not some hoax?' I said. 'Do you really travel through
+time?'
+
+'Really and truly I do.' And he looked frankly into my eyes. He
+hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. 'I only want half an
+hour,' he said. 'I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you.
+There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you
+this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll
+forgive my leaving you now?'
+
+I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words,
+and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
+the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily
+paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly
+I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet
+Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw
+that I could barely save that engagement. I got up and went down the
+passage to tell the Time Traveller.
+
+As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation,
+oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air
+whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the
+sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was
+not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in
+a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment--a figure so
+transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was
+absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes.
+The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the
+further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had,
+apparently, just been blown in.
+
+I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had
+happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange
+thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened,
+and the man-servant appeared.
+
+We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. 'Has Mr. ----
+gone out that way?' said I.
+
+'No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him
+here.'
+
+At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I
+stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second,
+perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he
+would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must
+wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And,
+as everybody knows now, he has never returned.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he
+swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy
+savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the
+Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian
+brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now--if I may use the
+phrase--be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral
+reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did
+he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still
+men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome
+problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own
+part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,
+fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating
+time! I say, for my own part. He, I know--for the question had been
+discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made--thought
+but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the
+growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must
+inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that
+is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me
+the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a
+few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for
+my comfort, two strange white flowers--shrivelled now, and brown and
+flat and brittle--to witness that even when mind and strength had
+gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart
+of man.
diff --git a/tools/vocab_builder/main.cpp b/tools/vocab_builder/main.cpp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62ba874
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/vocab_builder/main.cpp
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+#include <iostream>
+#include <vector>
+#include <map>
+#include <fstream>
+
+using namespace std;
+
+#define RESOURCE_NAME "../../resources/time_machine/timemachine_preprocessed.txt"
+
+int main() {
+    ifstream file(RESOURCE_NAME);
+    std::vector<std::string> words;
+    std::string word;
+    while (file >> word) {
+        words.push_back(word);
+    }
+
+    std::map<std::string, uint> vocab;
+    for (auto w : words) {
+        if (vocab.find(w) == vocab.end()) {
+            vocab[w] = 1;
+        }
+        else {
+            vocab[w]++;
+        }
+    }
+
+    for (auto it = vocab.begin(); it != vocab.end(); it++) {
+        cout << it->first << " : " << it->second << endl;
+    }
+
+    // show distribution
+    std::map<uint, uint> dist;
+    int unknown_cnt = 0;
+    int unknown_cnt2 = 0;
+    for (auto it = vocab.begin(); it != vocab.end(); it++) {
+        if (it->second < 1) {
+            unknown_cnt++;
+            unknown_cnt2 += it->second;
+            continue;
+        }
+        if (dist.find(it->second) == dist.end()) {
+            dist[it->second] = 1;
+        }
+        else {
+            dist[it->second]++;
+        }
+    }
+    for (auto it = dist.begin(); it != dist.end(); it++) {
+        cout << it->first << " : " << it->second << endl;
+    }
+    std::cout << "unknown_cnt : " << unknown_cnt << std::endl;
+    std::cout << "unknown_cnt2 : " << unknown_cnt2 << std::endl;
+    std::cout << "dist size : " << dist.size() << std::endl;
+    std::cout << "words size : " << words.size() << std::endl;
+    std::cout << "vocab size : " << vocab.size() << std::endl;
+
+    // save vocab
+    std::ofstream out("vocab.txt");
+    for (auto it = vocab.begin(); it != vocab.end(); it++) {
+        out << it->first << std::endl;
+    }
+    out.close();
+
+    return 0;
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tools/vocab_builder/makefile b/tools/vocab_builder/makefile
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..615c55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/vocab_builder/makefile
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+DIR_INC = -I./
+DIR_LIB = -L./
+TARGET	= builder
+CFLAGS = -g -Wall $(DIR_INC) $(DIR_LIB) -fsanitize=address
+LDFLAGS =
+SRCS := $(wildcard *.cpp) $(wildcard $(addsuffix /*.cpp, $(SRCDIR)))
+OBJECTS := $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(SRCS))
+RELEASE_MSG="[warning!!!!!] Compiling with debug flags"
+ifeq ($(RELEASE),1)
+	CFLAGS += -O3
+	CFLAGS := $(filter-out -fsanitize=address, $(CFLAGS))
+	RELEASE_MSG = "Compiling with optimizations for release"
+else
+	CFLAGS += -fsanitize=address
+endif
+
+$(TARGET) : $(OBJECTS)
+	@echo $(RELEASE_MSG)
+	g++ $(CFLAGS) $^ -o $@ $(LDFLAGS)
+%.o : %.c
+	g++ -c $(CFLAGS) $< -o $@
+clean:
+	@rm -f *.o $(TARGET)
+.PHONY:clean
\ No newline at end of file