The Time Machine Read online

  VIII

  'I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it aboutnoon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glassremained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing hadfallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very highupon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, Iwas surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judgedWandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then--thoughI never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, ormight be happening, to the living things in the sea.

  'The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeedporcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in someunknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena mighthelp me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea ofwriting had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, Ifancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was sohuman.

  'Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--wefound, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by manyside windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array ofmiscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. ThenI perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall,what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognizedby the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after thefashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones laybeside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water haddropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been wornaway. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of aBrontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards theside I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing awaythe thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our owntime. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fairpreservation of some of their contents.

  'Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day SouthKensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section,and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though theinevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, andhad, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-ninehundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness ifwith extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here andthere I found traces of the little people in the shape of rarefossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And thecases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks asI judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened ourfootsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the slopingglass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and veryquietly took my hand and stood beside me.

  'And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of anintellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities itpresented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded alittle from my mind.

  'To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelainhad a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology;possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me,at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly moreinteresting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to thefirst. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of ablock of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could findno saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they haddeliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up atrain of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery,though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I hadlittle interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went ondown a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I hadentered. Apparently this section had been devoted to naturalhistory, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. Afew shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffedanimals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, abrown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that,because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments bywhich the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then wecame to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularlyill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from theend at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from theceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which suggested thatoriginally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more inmy element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks ofbig machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but somestill fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness formechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so asfor the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could makeonly the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that ifI could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession ofpowers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

  'Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that shestartled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should havenoticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: Itmay be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museumwas built into the side of a hill.--ED.] The end I had come in atwas quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. Asyou went down the length, the ground came up against these windows,until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a London housebefore each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I wentslowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intentupon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, untilWeena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw thatthe gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, andthen, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundantand its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, itappeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. Mysense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that.I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination ofmachinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in theafternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no meansof making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of thegallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I hadheard down the well.

  'I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left herand turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlikethose in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping thislever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. SuddenlyWeena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judgedthe strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after aminute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more thansufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And Ilonged very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you maythink, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it wasimpossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only mydisinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began toslake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrainedme from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes Iheard.

  'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of thatgallery and into another and still larger one, which at the firstglance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags.The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, Ipresently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They hadlong since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had leftthem. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallicclasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man Imight, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition.But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was theenormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rottingpaper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chieflyof the _Philosophical Transactions_ and my own seventeen papers uponphysical optics.

  'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once havebeen a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a littlehope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where th
e roof hadcollapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to everyunbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases,I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They wereperfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. "Dance,"I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeedagainst the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelictmuseum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's hugedelight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling_The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I could. In part it was amodest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so faras my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturallyinventive, as you know.

  'Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escapedthe wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as forme it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a farunlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealedjar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed.I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glassaccordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In theuniversal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive,perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of asepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossilBelemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millionsof years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered thatit was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame--was, infact, an excellent candle--and I put it in my pocket. I found noexplosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronzedoors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I hadchanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

  'I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It wouldrequire a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at allthe proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands ofarms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or asword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promisedbest against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols,and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many were of somenew metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powderthere may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw wascharred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among thespecimens. In another place was a vast array of idols--Polynesian,Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think.And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name uponthe nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularlytook my fancy.

  'As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through galleryafter gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimesmere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place Isuddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by themerest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamitecartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed the case with joy. Thencame a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery,I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did inwaiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came.Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed fromtheir presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I shouldhave rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and(as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all togetherinto non-existence.

  'It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open courtwithin the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So werested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to considerour position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessiblehiding-place had still to be found. But that troubled me very littlenow. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best ofall defences against the Morlocks--I had matches! I had the camphorin my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me thatthe best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of theTime Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. Butnow, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towardsthose bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them,largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had neverimpressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar ofiron not altogether inadequate for the work.