Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (38 page)

"Looking
at
these
stars
suddenly
dwarfed
my
own
troubles
and
all the
gravities
of
terrestrial
life.
I
thought
of
their
unfathomable
distance,
and
the
slow
inevitable
drift
of
their
movements
out
of
the unknown
past
into
the
unknown
future.
I
thought
of
the
great
preces-sional
cycle
that
the
pole
of
the
earth
describes.
Only
forty
times
had that
silent
revolution
occurred
during
all
the
years
that
I
had
traversed. And
during
these
few
revolutions
all
the
activity,
all
the
traditions,
the complex
organisations,
the
nations,
languages,
literatures,
aspirations, even
the
mere
memory
of
Man
as
I
knew
him,
had
been
swept
out
of existence.
Instead
were
these
frail
creatures
who
had
forgotten
their high
ancestry,
and
the
white
Things
of
which
I
went
in
terror.
Then I
thought
of
the
Great
Fear
that
was
between
the
two
species,
and
for the
first
time,
with
a
sudden
shiver,
came
the
clear
knowledge
of
what the
meat
I
had
seen
might
be.
Yet
it
was
too
horrible!
I
looked
at
little Weena
sleeping
beside
me,
her
face
white
and
starlike
under
the
stars, and
forthwith
dismissed
the
thought.

"Through
that
long
night
I
held
my
mind
off
the
Morlocks
as
well as
I
could,
and
whiled
away
the
time
by
trying
to
fancy
I
could
find signs
of
the
old
constellations
in
the
new
confusion.
The
sky
kept very
clear,
except
for
a
hazy
cloud
or
so.
No
doubt
I
dozed
at
times. Then,
as
my
vigil
wore
on,
came
a
faintness
in
the
eastward
sky,
like the
reflection
of
some
colourless
fire,
and
the
old
moon
rose,
thin
and peaked
and
white.
And
close
behind,
and
overtaking
it,
and
overflowing
it,
the
dawn
came,
pale
at
first,
and
then
growing
pink
and
warm. No
Morlocks
had
approached
us.
Indeed,
I
had
seen
none
upon
the hill
that
night.
And
in
the
confidence
of
renewed
day
it
almost
seemed to
me
that
my
fear
had
been
unreasonable.
I
stood
up
and
found
my
foot
with
the
loose
heel
swollen
at
the
ankle
and
painful
under
the heel;
so
I
sat
down
again,
took
off
my
shoes,
and
flung
them
away.

"I
awakened
Weena,
and
we
went
down
into
the
wood,
now
green and
pleasant
instead
of
black
and
forbidding.
We
found
some
fruit wherewith
to
break
our
fast.
We
soon
met
others
of
the
dainty
ones, laughing
and
dancing
in
the
sunlight
as
though
there
was
no
such thing
in
Nature
as
the
night.
And
then
I
thought
once
more
of
the meat
that
I
had
seen.
I
felt
assured
now
of
what
it
was,
and
from
the bottom
of
my
heart
I
pitied
this
last
feeble
rill
from
the
great
flood of
humanity.
Clearly,
at
some
time
in
the
Long-Ago
of
human
decay the
Morlocks'
food
had
run
short.
Possibly
they
had
lived
on
rats
and suchlike
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