’It may seem odd to you, but
it was two days before I could follow up the new-found
clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I
felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies.
They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms
and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological
museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch.
Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic
influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks
I now began to appreciate.
’The next night I did not sleep
well. Probably my health was a little disordered.
I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once
or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which
I could perceive no definite reason. I remember
creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that
night Weena was among them and feeling reassured
by their presence. It occurred to me even then,
that in the course of a few days the moon must pass
through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark,
when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures
from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin
that had replaced the old, might be more abundant.
And on both these days I had the restless feeling of
one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured
that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by
boldly penetrating these underground mysteries.
Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I had
had a companion it would have been different.
But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down
into the darkness of the well appalled me. I
don’t know if you will understand my feeling,
but I never felt quite safe at my back.
’It was this restlessness, this
insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further
afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the
south-westward towards the rising country that is now
called Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direction
of nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green structure,
different in character from any I had hitherto seen.
It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins
I knew, and the façade had an Oriental look: the
face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green
tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of
Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect
suggested a difference in use, and I was minded to
push on and explore. But the day was growing late,
and I had come upon the sight of the place after a
long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over
the adventure for the following day, and I returned
to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena.
But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my
curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain
was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk,
by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved
I would make the descent without further waste of
time, and started out in the early morning towards
a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.
’Little Weena ran with me.
She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw
me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed
strangely disconcerted. “Good-bye, little
Weena,” I said, kissing her; and then putting
her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the
climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well
confess, for I feared my courage might leak away!
At first she watched me in amazement. Then she
gave a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began
to pull at me with her little hands. I think her
opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook
her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another
moment I was in the throat of the well. I saw
her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure
her. Then I had to look down at the unstable
hooks to which I clung.
’I had to clamber down a shaft
of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was
effected by means of metallic bars projecting from
the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the
needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than
myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the
descent. And not simply fatigued! One of
the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost
swung me off into the blackness beneath. For
a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience
I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and
back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering
down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible.
Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue
disk, in which a star was visible, while little Weena’s
head showed as a round black projection. The
thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more
oppressive. Everything save that little disk
above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again
Weena had disappeared.
’I was in an agony of discomfort.
I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again,
and leave the Under-world alone. But even while
I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend.
At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly coming up,
a foot to the right of me, a slender loophole in the
wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the
aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could
lie down and rest. It was not too soon.
My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I was trembling
with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this,
the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect
upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb and
hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.
’I do not know how long I lay.
I was roused by a soft hand touching my face.
Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches
and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white
creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground
in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light.
Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable
darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive,
just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they
reflected the light in the same way. I have no
doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity,
and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart
from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match
in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing
into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes
glared at me in the strangest fashion.
’I tried to call to them, but
the language they had was apparently different from
that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs
left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of
flight before exploration was even then in my mind.
But I said to myself, “You are in for it now,”
and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the
noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the
walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open
space, and striking another match, saw that I had
entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into
utter darkness beyond the range of my light. The
view I had of it was as much as one could see in the
burning of a match.
’Necessarily my memory is vague.
Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness,
and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral
Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place,
by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the
faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the
air. Some way down the central vista was a little
table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal.
The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even
at the time, I remember wondering what large animal
could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw.
It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the
big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking
in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness
to come at me again! Then the match burned down,
and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot
in the blackness.
’I have thought since how particularly
ill-equipped I was for such an experience. When
I had started with the Time Machine, I had started
with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future
would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in
all their appliances. I had come without arms,
without medicine, without anything to smoke at
times I missed tobacco frightfully even
without enough matches. If only I had thought
of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse
of the Underworld in a second, and examined it at leisure.
But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons
and the powers that Nature had endowed me with hands,
feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that
still remained to me.
’I was afraid to push my way
in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was
only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that
my store of matches had run low. It had never
occurred to me until that moment that there was any
need to economize them, and I had wasted almost half
the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom
fire was a novelty. Now, as I say, I had four
left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched
mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and
I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour.
I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those
dreadful little beings about me. I felt the box
of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and
other hands behind me plucking at my clothing.
The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was
indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realization
of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing
came home to me very vividly in the darkness.
I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They
started away, and then I could feel them approaching
me again. They clutched at me more boldly, whispering
odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently,
and shouted again rather discordantly.
This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and
they made a queer laughing noise as they came back
at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened.
I determined to strike another match and escape under
the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking
out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket,
I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But
I had scarce entered this when my light was blown
out and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks
rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like
the rain, as they hurried after me.
’In a moment I was clutched
by several hands, and there was no mistaking that
they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You
can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked those
pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey
eyes! as they stared in their blindness
and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look,
I promise you: I retreated again, and when my
second match had ended, I struck my third. It
had almost burned through when I reached the opening
into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the
throb of the great pump below made me giddy.
Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and,
as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and
I was violently tugged backward. I lit my last
match ... and it incontinently went out. But
I had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking
violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of
the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft,
while they stayed peering and blinking up at me:
all but one little wretch who followed me for some
way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy.
’That climb seemed interminable
to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of
it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest
difficulty in keeping my hold. The last few yards
was a frightful struggle against this faintness.
Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations
of falling. At last, however, I got over the
well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into
the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face.
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was
insensible.