Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (51 page)

"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.
Once,
indeed,
they
almost
got
away
from
me.
As
it
slipped from
my
hand,
I
had
to
butt
in
the
dark
with
my
head—I
could
hear the
Morlock's
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
fixed
and
pulled
over.
The
clinging
hands slipped
from
me.
The
darkness
presently
fell
from
my
eyes.
I
found myself
in
the
same
grey
light
and
tumult
I
have
already
described.

1 1 $fe>

"I
have
already
told
you
of
the
sickness
and
confusion
that
comes with
time
travelling.
And
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,
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
as
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
seconds
hand
of
a
watch—into
futurity.

"As
I
drove
on,
a
peculiar
change
crept
over
the
appearance
of things.
The
palpitating
greyness
grew
darker;
then—though
I
was still
travelling
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, a
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
ever
broader
and
more
red.
All
trace
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
this
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
headlong 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.