THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells - FULL AudioBook | Greatest AudioBooks V4

chapter one of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings were in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by paul adams the time machine by h.g wells chapter one the time traveler 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 talk to you at school it's founded on a misconception it's not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon said philby an argumentative person with red hair i do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it you'll 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 philby 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 philby can a cube that does not last for any time at all have a real existence filled we became pensive clearly the time traveler proceeded any real body must have extensions 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 inclined to overlock 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 attempts to re-light his cigar over the lamp that's very clear indeed now it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked to continue the time traveler 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 17 another at 23 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 traveler 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 cold 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 traveler 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 say 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 begin our existence 50 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 traveler it's against reason said philby what reason said the time traveler you can show black is white by argument said philby but you will never convince me possibly not said the time traveler 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 philby contended himself with laughter but i have experimental verification said the time traveler it will 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 once greek from the very lips of homer and plato the very young man fought in which case they would certainly plough you for the little go the german scholars have improved greeks 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 infest and hurry on ahead to discover a society said i erected on a strictly communistic basis of all the wild extravagant theories began the psychologists yes so it seemed to me and so i never talked of it until experimental verification cried i you're 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 traveler 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 philby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at burslem but before he had finished his preface the time traveler came back and filmed his 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 was scattered about the room and set it in front of the fire with two legs on the half rug 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 mantle and several ensconces so that the room was brilliantly illuminated i sat in a low armchair nearest the fire and i drew this forward so as to be almost between the time traveler and the fireplace philby 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 traveler looked at us and then at the mechanism well said the psychologist this little affair said the time traveler 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 traveler 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 the saddle represents the seat of a time traveler presently i'm 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 minutes pause perhaps the psychologist seemed about to speak to me but changed his mind then the time traveler put forth his finger towards the lever no he said suddenly lend me your hand and turn into 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'm absolutely certain there was no trickery there was a breath of wind and the lamp flame jumped one of the candles on the mantle 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 ivy and it was gone vanished saved for the lamp the table was bare everyone was silent for a minute then philby said he was damned the psychologist recovered from his stupa and suddenly looked under the table at that the time traveler laughed cheerfully well he said with a reminiscence of the psychologist then getting up he went to the tobacco jar on the mantle 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 traveled into time certainly said the time traveler 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 traveled into the future said philby 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 traveler because i presume that it has not moved in space and if it traveled into the future it would still be here all this time since it must have traveled through this time but i said if it traveled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room and last thirsty when we were here and the thirsty before that and so forth serious objections remarked the provincial mayor with an air of impartiality turning towards the time traveler not a bit said the time traveler 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 the 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 traveling through time 50 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 1 50th or 100th of what it would make if it were not traveling 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 traveler asked us what we thought of it all it sounds plausibly enough tonight said the medical man but wait until tomorrow wait for the common sense of the morning would you like to see the time machine itself asked the time traveler and there with taking the lamp in his hand he led the way down the long drafty 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 traveler 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 philby's eye over the shoulder of the medical man and he winked at me solemnly end of chapter 1 recording by paul adams www.yawnguy.com chapter 2 of the time machine by h.g wells this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by paul adams i think that at that time none of us quite believed in the time machine the fact is the time traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed you never felt that you saw all around him you always suspected some subtle reserve some ingenuity in ambush behind his lucid frankness had philby shown the model and explained the matter in the time traveler's words we would have shown him far less skepticism for we should have perceived his motives a pork butcher could understand philby but the time traveler had more than a touch of whim among his elements and we distrusted him things that would have made the frame of the less clever man seemed tricks in his hand 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 eggshell china so i don't think any of us said very much about time traveling in the interval between that thirsty 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 travelers 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 traveler and it's half past seven now said the medical man i suppose we'd better have dinner where's said i in 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 or the evening there was some speculation at the dinner table about the time traveler'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 hello i said at last and the door opened wider and the time traveler 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 table 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 grayer either with dust and dirt or because its color 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 foot saw 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 traveler 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 draft that's good he said his eyes grew brighter and a faint color 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 traveler i'm funny bill 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 wall gathering then remarkable behavior of an eminent scientist i heard the editor say thinking after his want 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 traveler limping painfully upstairs i don't think anyone else had noticed his lameness the first to recover completely from the surprise was the medical man who rang the bell the time traveler 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 nephew could nessa 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 clothed brushes in the future the journalists 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 journalists very joyous irreverent young men our special correspondent in the day after tomorrow reports the journalist was saying or rather shouting when the time traveler 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 traveling into the middle of next week tell us all about little rosebury will you what will you take for the lot the time traveler 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 traveler 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 my said the time traveler with his mouth full nodding his head i'll give a shilling a line for a verbatim note said the editor the time traveler 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 journalists tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of hetty potter the time traveler devoted his attention to his dinner and displayed the appetite of a the medical man smoked a cigarette and watched the time traveler 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 tonight 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 can'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 traveler 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 mine 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 hear us were in shadow for the candles in the smoking room had not been lighted and only the face of the journalists 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 travellers face end of chapter 2 recording by paul adams www.yawnguy.com chapter 3 of the time machine by h.g wells this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by paul adams 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 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 10 o'clock today 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 seem 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 watchit 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 tomorrow the laboratory grew faint and hazy then fainter and even fainter tomorrow night came black then day again night again day again faster and faster still an eddying murmur filled my ears and a strange dumb confusedness descended on my mind i'm 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 suppose 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 grayness 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 hillside upon which this house now stands and the shoulder rose above me gray 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 noticed 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 acceleration 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 there with 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 hillside and remained 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 laying the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which i or the machine occupied so long as i traveled at a high velocity through time this scarcely mattered i was so to speak attenuated was slipping like a vapor 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 the 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 forth with like an impatient fall 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 around me and i was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine everything still seemed gray 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 move and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones 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 traveled 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 a 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 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 all together 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 a 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 hillside 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 where 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 baskins 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 end of chapter 3 recording by paul adams www.yawnguy.com chapter 4 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter four in another moment we were standing face to face i am this fragile thing out of futurity he came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes the absence from his bearing of any signs 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 in 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 much 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 child-like 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 their 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 interests 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 checkered 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 play thing 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 toward a vast grey edifice of fretted stone as i went with him 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 all together of colossal dimensions i was naturally most occupied with a growing crowd of little people and with the big open portals that yawn before me shadowy and mysterious my general impression of the world i saw over their heads was a tangled waist 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 wax and petals they grew scattered as it willed 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 although i fancied i saw suggestions of all the phoenicians 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 19th century garments looking grotesque enough garlanded with flowers and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright soft coloured robes and shining white limbs in a melodious world 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 colored 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 channeled along the more frequented ways transverse to the length where innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone raised perhaps a foot from the floor upon these were heaps of fruits some i recognized as a kind of hyper atrophied raspberry and orange but for the most part they were strange between the table 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 at 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 the 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 afterward 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 flowery 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'm 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 fruit 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 attempt 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 in doland 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 little 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 a resolve 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 802701 a.d for that i should explain was the date on 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 splendor 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 aluminum 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 direct 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 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 miniatures of their parents i judge then that the children of that time were extremely precocious physically at least and i found afterward 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 offspring 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 resume 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 and 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 armrests cast and filled into the resemblance of griffin's 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 of you 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 is 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 today 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 of balance as they can we improve our favorite plants and animals and how few they are gradually by selective breeding now a newer 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 someday 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 cooperating 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 leaked 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 process of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes social triumphs too had been affected 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 but 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 vigor 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 it used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived and now comes 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 comes langer 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 end of chapter four chapter five of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter five as i stood there musing over this two perfect triumph of man the full moon yellow and gibbous came up out of an overflow of silver light in the northeast the bright little figures ceased to move about below a noiseless owl flitted by and i shivered with a chill of the night i determined to descend and find where i could sleep i looked for the building i knew then my eye traveled 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 utter dendrum 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 i said 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 bear 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 staunching 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 hillcrest to the little lawn two miles perhaps in ten minutes and i'm 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 unanswered 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 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 anyone 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 around 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 immaculite tables almost breaking my shin i lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains of which i've 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 around 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 behavior 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 across 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 down 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 around 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 a 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 behooves 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 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 wandering at my intense excitement overnight i made a careful examination of the ground about the little lawn i wasted some time in futile questions 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 stolen 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 now 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 wrapped 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 had 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 behave 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 again 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 toward 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 fists 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 the 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 24 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 you're wrecking their bronze panels and if they don't you'll 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 two hasty guesses at its meaning in the end you will find clues to it all and then suddenly the humor 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 and 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 the 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 and yet a certain feeling you may understand tethered me in a circle of a few miles around 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 and 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 flood thud thud like a beating of some big engine and i discovered from the flaring of my matches but 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 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 bills and modes of conveyance and the like conveniences during my time in this real future in some of these visions of utopia 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 all together inaccessible to a real traveler 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 untraveled friend either apprehend or believe then think how narrow the gap between a negro and the 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 say for a general impression of automatic organization i fear i can convey very little of the difference to your mind in the matter of sepulcher 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 and 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 these 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 and yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal and their sandals though undecorated were fairly complex specimens of mental work 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 there with others made up of words or letters even absolutely unknown to you well on the third day of my visit and that was how the world of eight hundred and two thousand seven hundred and one presented itself to me that day two 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 or 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 might 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 but 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 toward my center 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 for 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 arbor 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 and i did the same to hers and then i tried talk and found that her name was weiner 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 tie 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 and 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 neighborhood of the white sphinx almost the feeling of coming home and i would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold as 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 the 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 and yet i was still such a blockhead but i missed the lesson of that fear and in spite of weiner'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 see anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps i woke with a start and with an odd fancy that some grayish 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 gray hour when things are just creeping out of darknesses and when everything is colorless and clear cut and yet unreal i got up and went down into the great hall and sew out upon the flagstones in front of the palace i thought i would make a virtue of necessity and see the sun rise the moon was setting and the dying moonlight and the first power of dawn there were 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 coloring 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 him 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 weiner's rescue drove them out of my head i associated them in some indefinite way with a white animal i had startled in my first passionate search for the time machine but we know 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 color 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 the 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 the 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 grayish red eyes also that there was flax and 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 instance 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 certain 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 with all 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 wiener 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 whales 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 toward dark shadow and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light all reinforce the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina beneath my feet then the earth must be tunneled enormously and these tunnelings 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 had once accepted it and went on to assume the how of the splitting of the human species i daresay you will anticipate the shape of my theory although 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 at the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the capitalists and the laborer was the key to the whole position no doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you and wildly incredible and 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 work rooms 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 are 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 their 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 the same widening golf 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 labor 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 powder 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 cooperation 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 today its triumph had not been simply a triumph over nature but a triumph of nature and the fellow man this i must warn you was my theory at the time i had no convenience cerrone 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 two 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 undergrounders 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 eloy 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 eloy 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 wiener about this underworld 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 were 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 weiner's eyes and very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands while i solemnly burned the match end of chapter five chapter six of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter six it may seem odd to you but it was two days before i could follow up the newfound clue in what was manifestly the proper way i felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies they were just the half-bleached color of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum and they were filthy cold to the touch probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the eloy 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 wena 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 the clamour 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 toward the rising country that is now called comb wood i observed far off in the direction of the 19th century bandstead 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 aspects 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 side 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 wiener 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 toward a well near the ruins of granite and aluminum little wiener ran with me she danced beside me to the well but when she saw me lean over the mouth and looked downward she seemed strangely disconcerted goodbye little weiner 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 and 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 smile 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 200 yards the descent was affected 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 disc in which a star was visible while little wiener's head showed as a round black projection the flooding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive everything saved that little disc above was profoundly dark and while i looked up again wiener had disappeared i was in an agony of discomfort i had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again and leave the underworld alone but even while i turn this over in my mind i continue 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 ate my back was cramped and i was trembling with a 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 realist 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 overworld people so that i was needs left to my own unaided efforts and the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind but i said to myself you're 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 a 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 and i am come without arms without medicine without anything to smoke at times i miss tobacco frightfully even without enough matches if only i had thought of a codec i could have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second and examine 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 remain 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 a box in astonishing the upper worlders doomfire was a novelty now as i say i had four left and while i stood in the dark a hand touched mine blank fingers came feeling over my face and i was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odor 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 now 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 eeking 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 life was blown out and in the blackness i could hear the morlocks rustling like wind among leaves and patterning 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 inhumane they looked these pale chinless faces and great lidless pinkish gray eyes as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment but i did not stay to look i promise you i retreated again and when 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 and 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 disengage myself from the clutches of the morlocks and very speedily clambered up the shaft while they stayed peering and blinking up at me all but one little wretch who followed me for some way and wellness 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 smelled sweet and clean and then i remember weiner kissing my hands and ears and the voices of others among the eloy and then for a time i was insensible end of chapter six chapter seven of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter 7. 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 something inhumane and malign instinctively i loathe 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 wiena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remark about the dark knights 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 now i 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 favored 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 alloy like the carolingian kings had decayed to a mere beautiful futility they still possess the earth on sufferance since the morlocks subterranean for innumerable generations had come at last to find the daylight 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 has 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 a pace 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 eloy 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 underworld it seemed odd how it floated into my mind not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations but coming in almost like a question 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 the ripe prime of the human race where fear does not paralyze 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 have already examined me i wondered 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 practical to such dexterous climbers as the morlocks to judge by their wells must be 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 toward the southwest 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 wena 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 traveler 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 the evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hillcrest towards wimbledon wena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of gray 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's stillness the sky was clear remote and empty say for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset well that night the expectation took the color of my fears in that darkening calm my senses seemed pretter naturally sharpened i fancied i could even feel the hallowness of the ground beneath my feet could indeed almost see through it the morlocks on their anthill 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 weiner's fear 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 around 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 waited and went up the opposite side of the valley past a number of sleeping houses and by a statue of fawn 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 weiner 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 bowls to strike against i was very tired too after the excitement 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 moon rise the hillside 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 stardust 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 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 unfattenable 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 40 time 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 weiner asleeping beside me her face white and star-like 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 wilded away the time by trying the 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 eastern sky like the reflection of some colorless 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 more locks 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 wena and we went down into the woods 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 were 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 morlock's 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 alloy were mere fatted cattle which the ant-like morlocks preserved and preyed upon possibly saw to the breeding of and there was wiener 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 labors of his fellow man had taken necessity as his watch word and excuse and in the fullness of time necessity had come home to him i even tried a carlisle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay but this attitude of mind was impossible however great their intellectual degradation the alloy had kept too much of the human form not the claim of my sympathy and to make me pre-force a sharer in their degradation and their fear i had at that time a very vague idea as to the course i should pursue my first was to secure some safe place of refuge 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 in turning such schemes over in my mind i pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling end of chapter 7 recording by richard kilmer real medina texas chapter 8 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter 8 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 green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework it lay very high upon a turfy down and looking northeastward before i entered it i was surprised to see a large estuary or even creek where i judged wandsworth and batter sea 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 wena 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 gray covering then i perceived standing strange and gaunt in the center 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 rainwater had dropped through a leak in the roof the thing itself had been worn away further in the gallery was a huge skeleton barrel of a burontasaurus 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 airtight 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 paleontological 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 99 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 broke into 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 paleontology possibly historical galleries it might be even a library to me at least in my present circumstances these would be vastly more interesting than the spectacle of old-time geology in decay exploring i found another short gallery running transversely to the first this appeared to be devoted to minerals and the site of a block of sulfur set my mind running on gunpowder but i could find no saltpeter indeed no nitrates of any kind doubtless they had deliquest ages ago yet the sulfur 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 shriveled 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 for the most part they had the interests of puzzles and i could make only the vegas 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 weenit 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 editor 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 when his increasing apprehension 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 pattern 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 up upon the stand and grasping this lever in my hands i put all my weight upon it sideways suddenly wena deserted in the central aisle began the 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 more locked skull i might encounter and i longed very much to kill a morlock or so very inhuman you may think to want to go killings one's own descendants but it was impossible somehow to feel any humanity in the things only my disinclination to leave wina and a persuasion that if i began to slack my thirst for murder my time machine might suffer restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes i heard well mason one hand and wiener in the other i went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one which at 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 tail 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 an enormous waste of labor to which the somber wilderness of writing paper testified at the time i will confess that i thought chiefly of the philosophical transactions and my own 17 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 airtight 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 wean his huge delight i solemnly performed a kind of composite dance whistling the land of the leel as cheerfully as i could in part it was a modest can can in part a step dance in part a skirt dance so far as my tell 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 the 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 odor 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 bellum night that might 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 i put it in my pocket i found no explosives however nor any means of breaking down the bronze stores as yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing i had chanced upon nevertheless i left that gallery greatly elated i could not 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 steotite 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 airtight 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 defense against the morlocks i had matches i had the camper 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 hope to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work end of chapter eight recording by richard kilmer rio medina texas chapter 9 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by james k white the time machine by h.g wells chapter 9 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 air 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 wiener 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 wina 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 bear hillside 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 dew drops 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 smolder 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 wiena 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 wina 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 skies 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 patterning about me i pushed on grimly the patterning grew more distinct and then i caught the same queer sound and voices i had heard in the underworld 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 wiena 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 wina 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 maneuvering with my matches and wiena 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 wiena still motionless down upon a turfy bowl 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 morlock's 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 wiena 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 wina 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 vapor 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 slumberous 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 matchbox 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 exaltation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me i knew that both i and wena 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 seem no longer white but reddish as i stood a gape 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 slumberous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar the red glow and the morlock's 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 wina 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 morlock's 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 passed 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 center 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 hillside were some 30 or 40 more locks dazzled by the light and heat and blundering hither and dither 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 hawthorne 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 wiener but wiener 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 up brush of smoke streamed across the sky and through the rare tatters of that red canopy remote as though they belong 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 wiena 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 damn souls still going hither and dither 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 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 end of chapter 9 recording by james k white chula vista chapter 10 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by james k white the time machine by h.g wells chapter 10 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 wiena and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain and like blots upon the landscape rose the coppolas above the ways to the underworld i understood now what all the beauty of the overworld 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 underworld 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 underworld however it was affected had become disjointed mother necessity who had been staved off for a few thousand years came back again and she began below the underworld being in contact with machinery which however perfect still needs some little thought outside habit had probably retained per force 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 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 things shape 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 sun setting 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 bud in the dark with my head i could hear the morlock 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 hand slipped from me the darkness presently fell from my eyes i found myself in the same gray light and tumult i have already described end of chapter 10 recording by james k white chula vista chapter 11 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter 11. i have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time traveling at 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 has 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 second hands on a watch into futurity as i drove on a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things the palpitating greatness grew darker then though i was still traveling 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 the 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 even broader and more red all traces 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 the 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 head long 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 northeastward it was inky black and out of the blackness shown brightly and steadily the pale white stars overhead it was a deep indian red and starless and southeastward 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 color and all the trace of life that i could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their southeastern 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 southwest to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wand's 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 encrustation of salt pink under the lord's 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 in 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 encircling disappear over some low helix beyond the sound of its voice was so dismal that i shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine looking around me again i saw that quite near what i had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly toward 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 antenna like carter's 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 encrustation 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 the sinister apparition crawling toward 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 thread-like 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 algae slime or 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 somber 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 and the salt dead sea the stony beach crawling with these foul slow stirring monsters the uniform poisonous looking green of the likeness plants the thin air that hurt 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 earthly crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks and in the western sky i saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon so i traveled 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 30 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 northeastward 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 the 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 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 concavity obey had appeared in the curve i saw this grow larger for perhaps a minute 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 the blow and 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 a 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 bleeding of sheep the cries of birds the hum of insects and 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 toward 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 trailing 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 end of chapter 11 recording by richard kilmer real medina texas chapter 12 of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells chapter 12. 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 blew 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 evidence of decadent humanity these two 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 ratchett had walked across the room traveling 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 hillier for a moment but he passed like a flash then i stopped at 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 southeast corner of the laboratory it had come to rest again in the northwest against the wall where you saw sought 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 be grimed i saw the paul mall gazette on the table by the door i found the date was indeed today and looking at the timepiece saw the hour was almost eight o'clock i heard your voices in 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 tonight 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 ascertation 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 great there was a momentary stillness the chairs began the creek and shoes to scrape upon the carpet i took my eyes off the time traveler's face and looked round at his audience they were in the dark and little spots of color 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 traveler's shoulder you don't believe it well i thought not the time traveler 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 mutant 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-heeled scars on his knuckles the medical man rose came to the lamp and examined the flowers the geneseems odd he said the psychologists leaned 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 traveler hesitated then suddenly certainly not where did you really get them said the medical man [Music] the time traveler put his hand to his head he spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that he looted him they were put into my pocket by wiener when i traveled 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 traveler 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 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 balling 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 the next day and see the time traveler 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 bow 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 traveler 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 eyes wondered about the room i only want half an hour he said i know why you came and it's awfully good of you there are some magazines here if you'll stop the lunch i'll prove to you this time traveling 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 lunchtime 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 passageway to tell the time traveler 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 traveler was not there i seemed to have seen 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 was 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 manservant appeared we looked at each other then ideas began to come has mister 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 traveler 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 traveler vanished three years ago and as everybody knows now he has never returned end of chapter 12 recording by richard kilmer rio medina texas epilogue of the time machine this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the time machine by h.g wells 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 groups of the jurassic times he may even now if i may use the phrase be wondering on some plesiosaurus haunted o elliptic coral wreath or beside the lonely sailing 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 worrisome problems solved into the manhood of the race for i for my own part cannot think that these later days of weak experimenting 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 it 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 shriveled now and brown and flat and brittle to witness that even when mind and strength had gone gratitude and mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man end of the epilogue recording by richard kilmer real medina texas end of the time machine by h.g wells you

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Length: 227min 50sec (13670 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 03 2014