The Time Machine — EN

IX
The Morlocks

“It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could fol­low up the new-found clue in what was man­i­fest­ly the prop­er way. I felt a pecu­liar shrink­ing from those pal­lid bod­ies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees pre­served in spir­it in a zoo­log­i­cal muse­um. And they were filth­ily cold to the touch. Prob­a­bly my shrink­ing was large­ly due to the sym­pa­thet­ic influ­ence of the Eloi, whose dis­gust of the Mor­locks I now began to appreciate.

“The next night I did not sleep well. Prob­a­bly my health was a lit­tle dis­or­dered. I was oppressed with per­plex­i­ty and doubt. Once or twice I had a feel­ing of intense fear for which I could per­ceive no def­i­nite rea­son. I remem­ber creep­ing noise­less­ly into the great hall where the lit­tle peo­ple were sleep­ing in the moon­light – that night Weena was among them – and feel­ing reas­sured by their pres­ence. It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quar­ter, and the nights grow dark, when the appear­ances of these unpleas­ant crea­tures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new ver­min that had replaced the old, might be more abun­dant. And on both these days I had the rest­less feel­ing of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recov­ered by bold­ly pen­e­trat­ing these under­ground mys­ter­ies. Yet I could not face the mys­tery. If only I had had a com­pan­ion it would have been dif­fer­ent. But I was so hor­ri­bly alone, and even to clam­ber down into the dark­ness of the well appalled me. I don’t know if you will under­stand my feel­ing, but I nev­er felt quite safe at my back.

“It was this rest­less­ness, this inse­cu­ri­ty, per­haps, that drove me fur­ther and fur­ther afield in my explor­ing expe­di­tions. Going to the south-west­ward towards the ris­ing coun­try that is now called Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direc­tion of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Banstead, a vast green struc­ture, dif­fer­ent in char­ac­ter from any I had hith­er­to seen. It was larg­er than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had an Ori­en­tal look: the face of it hav­ing the lus­tre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a cer­tain type of Chi­nese porce­lain. This dif­fer­ence in aspect sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ence in use, and I was mind­ed to push on and explore. But the day was grow­ing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after a long and tir­ing cir­cuit; so I resolved to hold over the adven­ture for the fol­low­ing day, and I returned to the wel­come and the caress­es of lit­tle Weena. But next morn­ing I per­ceived clear­ly enough that my curios­i­ty regard­ing the Palace of Green Porce­lain was a piece of self-decep­tion, to enable me to shirk, by anoth­er day, an expe­ri­ence I dread­ed. I resolved I would make the descent with­out fur­ther waste of time, and start­ed out in the ear­ly morn­ing towards a well near the ruins of gran­ite and aluminium.

“Lit­tle Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look down­ward, she seemed strange­ly dis­con­cert­ed. “Good-bye, Lit­tle Weena,” I said, kiss­ing her; and then putting her down, I began to feel over the para­pet for the climb­ing hooks. Rather hasti­ly, I may as well con­fess, for I feared my courage might leak away! At first she watched me in amaze­ment. Then she gave a most piteous cry, and run­ning to me, she began to pull at me with her lit­tle hands. I think her oppo­si­tion nerved me rather to pro­ceed. I shook her off, per­haps a lit­tle rough­ly, and in anoth­er moment I was in the throat of the well. I saw her ago­nized face over the para­pet, and smiled to reas­sure her. Then I had to look down at the unsta­ble hooks to which I clung.

“I had to clam­ber down a shaft of per­haps two hun­dred yards.

The descent was effect­ed by means of metal­lic bars pro­ject­ing from the sides of the well, and these being adapt­ed to the needs of a crea­ture much small­er and lighter than myself, I was speed­i­ly cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not sim­ply fatigued! One of the bars bent sud­den­ly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the black­ness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that expe­ri­ence I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were present­ly acute­ly painful, I went on clam­ber­ing down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as pos­si­ble. Glanc­ing upward, I saw the aper­ture, a small blue disk, in which a star was vis­i­ble, while lit­tle Weena’s head showed as a round black pro­jec­tion. The thud­ding sound of a machine below grew loud­er and more oppres­sive. Every­thing save that lit­tle disk above was pro­found­ly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.

“I was in an agony of dis­com­fort. I had some thought of try­ing to go up the shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while I turned this over in my mind I con­tin­ued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw dim­ly com­ing up, a foot to the right of me, a slen­der loop­hole in the wall. Swing­ing myself in, I found it was the aper­ture of a nar­row hor­i­zon­tal tun­nel in which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I was trem­bling with the pro­longed ter­ror of a fall. Besides this, the unbro­ken dark­ness had had a dis­tress­ing effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb and hum of machin­ery pump­ing air down the shaft.

“I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touch­ing my face. Start­ing up in the dark­ness I snatched at my match­es and, hasti­ly strik­ing one, I saw three stoop­ing white crea­tures sim­i­lar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hasti­ly retreat­ing before the light. Liv­ing, as they did, in what appeared to me impen­e­tra­ble dark­ness, their eyes were abnor­mal­ly large and sen­si­tive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fish­es, and they reflect­ed the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that ray­less obscu­ri­ty, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incon­ti­nent­ly, van­ish­ing into dark gut­ters and tun­nels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.

“I tried to call to them, but the lan­guage they had was appar­ent­ly dif­fer­ent from that of the Over-world peo­ple; so that I was needs left to my own unaid­ed efforts, and the thought of flight before explo­ration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, “You are in for it now,” and, feel­ing my way along the tun­nel, I found the noise of machin­ery grow loud­er. Present­ly the walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open space, and strik­ing anoth­er match, saw that I had entered a vast arched cav­ern, which stretched into utter dark­ness beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burn­ing of a match.

“Nec­es­sar­i­ly my mem­o­ry is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dim­ness, and cast grotesque black shad­ows, in which dim spec­tral Mor­locks shel­tered from the glare. The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppres­sive, and the faint hal­i­tus of fresh­ly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the cen­tral vista was a lit­tle table of white met­al, laid with what seemed a meal. The Mor­locks at any rate were car­niv­o­rous! Even at the time, I remem­ber won­der­ing what large ani­mal could have sur­vived to fur­nish the red joint I saw. It was all very indis­tinct: the heavy smell, the big unmean­ing shapes, the obscene fig­ures lurk­ing in the shad­ows, and only wait­ing for the dark­ness to come at me again! Then the match burned down, and stung my fin­gers, and fell, a wrig­gling red spot in the blackness.

“I have thought since how par­tic­u­lar­ly ill-equipped I was for such an expe­ri­ence. When I had start­ed with the Time Machine, I had start­ed with the absurd assump­tion that the men of the Future would cer­tain­ly be infi­nite­ly ahead of our­selves in all their appli­ances. I had come with­out arms, with­out med­i­cine, with­out any­thing to smoke – at times I missed tobac­co fright­ful­ly – even with­out enough match­es. If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under­world in a sec­ond, and exam­ined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the pow­ers that Nature had endowed me with – hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safe­ty-match­es that still remained to me.

“I was afraid to push my way in among all this machin­ery in the dark, and it was only with my last glimpse of light I dis­cov­ered that my store of match­es had run low. It had nev­er occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to econ­o­mize them, and I had wast­ed almost half the box in aston­ish­ing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a nov­el­ty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fin­gers came feel­ing over my face, and I was sen­si­ble of a pecu­liar unpleas­ant odour. I fan­cied I heard the breath­ing of a crowd of those dread­ful lit­tle beings about me. I felt the box of match­es in my hand being gen­tly dis­en­gaged, and oth­er hands behind me pluck­ing at my cloth­ing. The sense of these unseen crea­tures exam­in­ing me was inde­scrib­ably unpleas­ant. The sud­den real­iza­tion of my igno­rance of their ways of think­ing and doing came home to me very vivid­ly in the dark­ness. I shout­ed at them as loud­ly as I could. They start­ed away, and then I could feel them approach­ing me again. They clutched at me more bold­ly, whis­per­ing odd sounds to each oth­er. I shiv­ered vio­lent­ly, and shout­ed again – rather dis­cor­dant­ly. This time they were not so seri­ous­ly alarmed, and they made a queer laugh­ing noise as they came back at me. I will con­fess I was hor­ri­bly fright­ened. I deter­mined to strike anoth­er match and escape under the pro­tec­tion of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flick­er with a scrap of paper from my pock­et, I made good my retreat to the nar­row tun­nel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the black­ness I could hear the Mor­locks rustling like wind among leaves, and pat­ter­ing like the rain, as they hur­ried after me.

“In a moment I was clutched by sev­er­al hands, and there was no mis­tak­ing that they were try­ing to haul me back. I struck anoth­er light, and waved it in their daz­zled faces. You can scarce imag­ine how nau­se­at­ing­ly inhu­man they looked – those pale, chin­less faces and great, lid­less, pink­ish-grey eyes! – as they stared in their blind­ness and bewil­der­ment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreat­ed again, and when my sec­ond match had end­ed, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the open­ing into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me gid­dy. Then I felt side­ways for the pro­ject­ing hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I was vio­lent­ly tugged back­ward. I lit my last match… and it incon­ti­nent­ly went out. But I had my hand on the climb­ing bars now, and, kick­ing vio­lent­ly, I dis­en­gaged myself from the clutch­es of the Mor­locks and was speed­i­ly clam­ber­ing up the shaft, while they stayed peer­ing and blink­ing up at me: all but one lit­tle wretch who fol­lowed me for some way, and well­nigh 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.