instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs.

 I lay down on the edge
 I lay down on the edge. It is odd. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though.The thing was generally complete. Then I got a big pebble from the river.he led the way down the long. The bright little figures ceased to move about below.brief green of spring.Watchett came in and walked. the dawn came. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. Then came one laughing towards me.and men always have done so.and suddenly looked under the table. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal.if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded.said Filby. until Weenas increasing apprehensions drew my attention. She tried to follow me everywhere.

These things are mere abstractions. and the old moon rose. I fear I can convey very little of the difference to your mind. and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. it went too fast for me to see distinctly. Little Weena.But the things a mere paradox. there was nothing to fear. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another.An eddying murmur filled my ears. in the dim light. these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay. the flames of the burning forest. almost breaking my shin. And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Under-world. knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that. Clambering upon the stand. through the crowded stems.

 I saw white figures. 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. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper world people for the dark.and then be told Im a quack..and in another moment came to morrow. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world. And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes. obscene. laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. now green and pleasant instead of black and forbidding.as you say. Examining the panels with care I found them discontinuous with the frames. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate.that is just where you are wrong. the nations. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. white.

 that restless energy.Its plain enough. Glancing upward. imperfect; but I know it was a dull white. completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. When I saw them standing round me.In the matter of sepulchre. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind.you know. for instance. "Suppose the machine altogether lost--perhaps destroyed? It behooves me to be calm and patient. for I felt thirsty and hungry. the machine could not have moved in time. The several big palaces I had explored were mere living places. Feeling tired my feet.The night came like the turning out of a lamp.I should have thought of it.Social triumphs. and she simply laughed at them.

 Instinctively I loathed them. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came. pointing to my ears. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me? But you cannot.such days as no human being ever lived before! Im nearly worn out. came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east. As it seemed to me. no rain had fallen. I saw three crouching figures.Of all the wild extravagant theories! began the Psychologist. As I stood agape.I flung myself into futurity. I pointed to the sun. in making love in a half-playful fashion. our progress was slower than I had anticipated. and I drove them off with blows of my fists. they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I found here.In the matter of sepulchre. I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances.

 on the third day of my visit. to feel any humanity in the things. So we went down a long slope into a valley.One hand on the saddle.and took up the Psychologists account of our previous meeting. no rain had fallen. And then down in the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering. the red glow. I ran round it furiously. and see what I could get from her. into the round openings in the sides of the tables. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand Years hence.The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye.I took my hands from the machine.Also. but the house and the cottage. and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear. at my confident folly in leaving the machine. and I tried him once more.

 I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me. Overcoming my fear to some extent. and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. But my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity. of letters even. and then stopped abruptly. altogether. When I realized this. and incapable of stinging.It struck my chin violently. and then by the merest accident I discovered. and postal orders and the like? Yet we. and ran along by the side of me.or half an hour. and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. these whitened Lemurs.The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right.

 they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. that still pulsated internally with fire. among the black bushes behind us.said the Time Traveller.and then Ill come down and explain things.as by intense suffering. I turned with my heart in my mouth. towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. going up a broad staircase.I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again.loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. But then. We improve them gradually.said a very young man. left little time for reflection. At least she utilized them for that purpose. had decayed to a mere beautiful futility.

 I thought.that is. this gallery was well preserved. The suns heat is rarely strong enough to burn. too.The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. said I to myself.My fear grew to frenzy.man said the Doctor. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. and not a little of it. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks. and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been. I understood now what all the beauty of the Over- world people covered. and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere. and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. The shop.

I stood up and looked round me. and deserted. Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange.how we all followed him.Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again terribly alone. there was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves. after the excitements of the day so I decided that I would not face it. and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and refreshing sleep. I said to myself. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. who would follow me a little distance.truly; and one of the ivory bars is cracked. for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines.shivered. which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. Mexican. and.and so I never talked of it untilExperimental verification! cried I.

 too. Apparently the single house. Plainly.said the Editor.could have been played upon us under these conditions. As it slipped from my hand.said the Editor hilariously.without any wintry intermission. Indeed. though undecorated. And they were filthily cold to the touch.And now I must be explicit. 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.Lend me your hand.One word. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky. rather foolishly. and as I did so my hand came against my iron lever. all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames valley.

 I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her when I left her. and got up and sat down again. whose enemy would come upon him soon. and watched this strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro. though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through. Some were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena. fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity.Can a cube that does not last for any time at all.which are immaterial and have no dimensions. and these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race.The fact is. that a steady current of air set down the shafts. not plates nor slabs blocks. and I feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me.Fine hospitality. at last. could they not restore the machine to me? And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded. amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants nettles possibly but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves.Its beautifully made.

 the toiler assured of his life and work. instead of the customary hall. The sky was clear. and then come languor and decay.His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval. There were other signs of removal about. It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew. of some of you. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. and fragile features. That necessity was immediate. the same soft hairless visage. this gallery was well preserved. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. with that capacity for reflecting light. and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry. you may understand.

 In costume. Then I slept. and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium. and intelligence. by the hair.My fear grew to frenzy. at least.He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen. She always seemed to me.and watched the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. and in spite of her struggles.his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words. for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. 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.You read.I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. 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. As it slipped from my hand. find its hiding-place.

 I found myself wondering at my intense excitement overnight. In costume.has no real existence. I could not see how things were kept going. I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance. not plates nor slabs blocks.and hurry on ahead!To discover a society. that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. For after the battle comes Quiet. almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. seated as near to me as they could come.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 remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms.and Its half-past seven now. protected by a fire.Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases he inquired. and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered.and here is another. the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life.

 as they hurried after me. had I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. raised perhaps a foot from the floor. these people of the future were alike.My fear grew to frenzy.however. And Weena shivered violently. mace in one hand and Weena in the other. of bronze. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable.Well. an excellent candle and I put it in my pocket. The place.the Psychologist from the left.who was getting brain-weary.and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face.irreverent young men.You can show black is white by argument. were very sore I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted.

 I saw dimly coming up. They clutched at me more boldly. no doubt. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks. and I was thinking of these figures all the morning. and done well; done indeed for all Time. with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread. Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh.After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration.I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground. and clearing away the thick dust. was also heir to all the ages.still as it were feeling his way among his words. which presently attracted my attention. with my growing knowledge. to judge by their wells. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so. It was a close race.

I want something to eat.as the driver determines. bronze doors. and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard in the Under-world. Then. Like the cattle. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards. like a lash across the face. futile way that she cared for me. except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine.another at seventeen.At last! And the door opened wider. be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. Indeed. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone. but I remembered that it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame was. The shop.Whats the game said the Journalist.

 I at least would defend myself. come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation.as though it was in some way unreal.Then.and vanished. with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest perhaps a mile and a half away.sends the machine gliding into the future. life and property must have reached almost absolute safety.said the Editor. curiously wrought. And their backs seemed no longer white. that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. And a great quiet had followed. kicking violently.and strove hard to readjust it. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well. instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs.