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The Time Machine - HG Wells · Audiobook Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Time Machine, Chapter one. The time Traveler, for so
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: it will be convenient to speak of him, was expounding
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a recondite matter to us. His gray eyes shone and twinkled,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: embraced and caressed us, rather than submitted to be sat upon.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And there was that luxurious after dinner atmosphere when thought
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Romes gracefully free of the trammels of precision, and he
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: put it to us in this way, marking the points
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: with a lean forefinger, as we sat and lazily admired
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: his earnestness over his new paradox as we thought it,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and his fecundity. You must follow me carefully. I shall
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: have to controvert nor two ideas that are almost universally accepted.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school, is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: founded on a misconception. Is not that a rather large
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: thing to expect us to begin upon? Said philby an
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: argumentative person with red hair. I do not mean to
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You will soon admit as much as I need from you.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You know, of course, that a mathematical line, a line
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: that neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: That is all right, said the psychologist. Nor having only length,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: breadth and thickness. Can a cube have a real existence? There,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I object, said Philby. Of course a solid body may
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: exist all real things, so most people think. But wait
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: a moment, can an instantaneous cube exist? Don't follow you,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: said Philby? Can a cube that does not last for
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: any time at all? Have a real existence? Philby became pensive. Clearly,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the time traveler proceeded, Any real body must have extension
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: in four directions. It must have length, breadth, thickness, and duration.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: will explain to you in a moment, we incline to
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: we call the three planes of space, and a fourth time.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: between the former three dimensions, and the latter because it
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the ladder from the beginning to the end of our lives.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: That said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: relight his cigar over the lamp. That very clear. Indeed,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: now it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: continued the time traveler, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. Really,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: this is what is meant by the fourth dimension. Though
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: some people who talk about the fourth dimension do not
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: know they mean it. It is only another way of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: looking at time. There is no difference between time and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: any of the three dimensions of space, except that our
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: all heard what they have to say about this fourth dimension.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I have not said the provincial mayor. It is simply
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: this that space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of as having three dimensions, which one may call length, breadth,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: people have been asking why three dimensions, particularly why not
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: another direction at right angles to the other three, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: have even tried to construct a four dimension geometry. Professor
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Simon Knucomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Society only a month or so ago. You know how
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: on a flat surface which has only two dimensions, we
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: can represent a figure of a three dimensional solid. And
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: could represent one of four if they could master the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: perspective of the thing. See I think so, murmured the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: provincial mayor, and knitting his brows, he lapsed into an
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats me
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: mystic words. Yes, I think I see it now, he said,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner. Well,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I do not mind telling you I have been at
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: work upon this geometry of four dimensions for some time.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Some of my results are curious. For instance, here is
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: a portrait of a man at eight years old, another
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty three, and
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: three dimensional representations of his four dimensioned being, which is
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: a fixed and unalterable thing. Scientific people proceeded the time traveler,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: know very well that time is only a kind of space.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: line I traced with my finger shows the movement of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the barometer. Yesterday it was so high. Yesterday night it fell.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in any of the dimensions of space generally recognized. But
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: certainly it traced such a line, And that line, therefore,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: we must conclude, was along the time dimension. But said
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the medical man, staring hard at a coal in the fire,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: if time is really only a fourth dimension of space,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: why is it, and why has it always been regarded
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: as something different? And why cannot we move in time
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: as we move about in the other dimensions of space?
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The time traveler smiled, Are you sure we can move
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: freely in space? Right and left? We can go backward
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and forward freely enough, and men always have done so.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I admit we move freely in two dimensions, But how
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: about up and down? Gravitation limits us? There not exactly,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: said the medical man. There are balloons. But before the balloons,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: say for spasmodic jumping, and the inequalities of the surface,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: man had no freedom of vertical movement. Still they could
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: move a little up and down, said the medical man, easier,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: far easier down than up. And you cannot move at
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: all in time. You cannot get away from the present moment,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: my dear sir. That is just where you are wrong.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That is just where the whole world has gone wrong.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: We are always getting away from the present moment. Our
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: passing along the time dimension with a uniform velocity from
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the cradle to the grave, just as we should travel
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: down if we began our existence fifty miles above the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: earth serve. But the great difficulty is this, interrupted the psychologist.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: You can move about in all directions of space, but
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: you cannot move about in time. That is the germ
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: that we cannot move about in time. For instance, if
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I am recalling an incident very vividly, I go back
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to the instant of its occurrence. I become absent minded.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: As you say, I jump back for a moment. Of course,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: we have no means of staying back for any length
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of time, any more than a savage or an animal
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: has of staying six feet above the ground. But a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: He can go up against gravitation in a balloon. And
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: why should he not hope that ultimately he may be
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: able to stop or accelerate his drift along the time dimension,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: or even turn about and travel the other way. Oh,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: this began Philby, is all, why not, said the time traveler.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It's against reason, said Philby. What reason? Said the time traveler.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You can show black as white by argument, said Philby,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But you will never convince me. Possibly not, said the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: time traveler. But now you begin to see the object
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of my investigations into the geometry of four dimensions. Long ago,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I had a vague inkling of a machine to travel
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: through time, exclaimed the very young man, that shall travel
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: indifferently in any direction of space and time, as the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: driver determines. Philby contented himself with laughter. But I have
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: experimental verification, said the time traveler. It would be remarkably
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: convenient for the historian. The psychologist suggested one might travel
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: for instance. Don't you think you would attract attention, said
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the medical man. Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: One might get one's Greek from the very lips of
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Homer and Plato, the very young man thought, in which
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: case they would certainly plow you for the little go.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: The German scholars have improved Greek so much. Then there
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: is the future, said the very young man. Just think
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: one might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulated interest,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and hurry on ahead to discover a society, said I
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: erected on a strictly communistic basis of all the wild,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: extravagant theories, began the psychologist. Yes, so it seemed to me,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and so I never talked of it until experimental verification,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: cried I you are going to verify that the experiment,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: cried Philby, who was getting brain weary. Let us see
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: your experiment, anyhow, said the psychologist. Though it's all humbug,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: you know. The time traveler smiled round at us, then,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: trousers pockets. He walked slowly out of the room, and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: we heard his slipper shuffling down the long passage to
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: his laboratory. The psychologist looked at us. I wonder what
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: he's got. Some sleight of hand trick or other, said
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the medical man, and Philby tried to tell us about
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a conjurer he had seen at Burslem, But before he
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: had finished his preface, the time traveler came back, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Philby's anecdote collapsed. The thing the time traveler held in
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: in it, and some transparent crystalline substance. And now I
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: must be explicit for this that follows, unless his explanation
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: is to be accepted, is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: about the room and set it in front of the fire,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: with two legs on the hearth rug. On this table
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and sat down. The only other object on the table
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: was a small shaded lap. The bright light of which
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: fell upon the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: about two in brass candlesticks upon the mantle, and several ensconces,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: so that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a low arm chair nearest the fire, and I drew
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: this forward so as to be almost between the time
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: traveler and the fireplace. Philby sat behind him, looking over
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: his shoulder. The medical man and the provincial mayor watched
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: him in profile, from the right, the psychologist from the left.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: The very young man stood behind the psychologist. We were
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: all on the alert. It appears incredible to me that
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: any kind of trick, however subtly conceived, and however adroitly done,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: could have been played upon us under these conditions. The
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: time traveler looked at us, and then at the mechanism. Well,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: said the psychologist. This little affair, said the time traveler,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: together above. The apparatus is only a model. It is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: my plan for a machine to travel through time. You
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it was in some way unreal. He pointed to the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: part with his finger. Also, here is one little white lever,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: and here is another. The medical man got up out
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: of his chair and peered into the thing. It's beautifully made,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: he said, it took two years to make, retorted the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: time traveler. Then, when we had all imitated the action
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of the medical man, he said, now I want you
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: clearly to understand that this lever being pressed over sends
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveler. Presently,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I am going to press the lever, and off the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future time
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and disappear. Have a good look at the thing, look
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I don't want to waste this model and then be
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I'm a quack. There was a minute's pause. Perhaps the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his mind.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Then the time traveler put forth his finger towards the lever. No,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: he said, suddenly, lend me your hand, And turning to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the psychologist, he took that individual's hand in his own
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and told him to put out his forefinger, so that
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: it was the psychologist himself who sent forth the model
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: time machine on its interminable voyage. We all saw the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: One of the candles on the mantel was blown out,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: seen as a ghost for a second, perhaps as an
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory. And it was gone, vanished,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: save for the lamp. The table was bare. Everyone was
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: silent for a minute. Then Philby said he was damned.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: The psychologist recovered from his stupor and suddenly looked under
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the table at that. The time traveler laughed cheerfully. Well,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: he said, with a reminiscence of the psychologist. Then, getting up,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: with his back to us, began to fill his pipe.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: We stared at each other. Look here, said the medical man.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that that machine has traveled into time? Certainly, said the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: time traveler, stooping to light a spill at the fire.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Then he turned, lighting his pipe to look at the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: psychologist's face. The psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: in there, he indicated the laboratory, and when that is
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: put together, I mean to have a journey on my
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: own account. You mean to say that that machine has
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: traveled into the future, said Philby. Into the future or
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the past. I don't for certain know which. After an interval,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the psychologist had an inspiration. It must have gone into
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the past, if it has gone anywhere, He said, why,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: said the time traveler, Because I presume that it has
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: not moved in space, and if it traveled into the future,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: it would still be here all this time, since it
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: must have traveled through this time. But I said, if
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it traveled into the past, it would have been visible
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: when we came first into this room, and last Thursday
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: when we were here, and the thursday before that, and
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: so forth. Serious objections, remarked the provincial mayor, with an
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: air of impartiality, turning towards the time traveler. Not a bit,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: said the time traveler. And to the psychologist, you think
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: you can explain that its presentation below the threshold, you know,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: diluted presentation, of course, said the psychologist, and reassured us
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that's a simple point of psychology. I should have thought
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of it. It's plain enough and helps the paradox delightfully.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: any more than we can. Thus spoke of a wheel
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: spinning or a bullet flying through the air. If it
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: is traveling through time fifty times or a hundred times
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: faster than we are. If it gets through a minute
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: while we get through a second, the impression it creates will,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: of course, be only one fiftieth or one hundredth of
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: what it would make if it were not traveling in time.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: That's plain enough. He passed his hand through the space
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: in which the machine had been. You see, he said, laughing.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: We sat and stared at the vacant table for a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: minute or so. Then the time traveler asked us what
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: we thought of it all. It sounds plausible enough to night,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: said the medical man. But wait until tomorrow, wait for
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the common sense of the morning. Would you like to
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: see the time machine itself, asked the time traveler, and therewith,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: down the long, drafty corridor to his laboratory. I remember
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: vividly the flickering light, his queer broad head in silhouette,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the dance of the shadows. How we all followed him,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: puzzled but incredulous. And how there in the laboratory we
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: parts of ivory. Parts had certainly been filed or sawn
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the twisted crystaline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a better look at it. Quartz, it seemed to be.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Look here, said the medical man. Are you perfectly serious?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Or is this a trick like that ghost you showed
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: us last Christmas? Upon that machine, said the time traveler,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: holding the lamp aloft. I intend to explore time. Is
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that plain? I was never more serious in my life.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: None of us quite knew how to take it. I
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: caught Philbey's eye over the shoulder of the medical man,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and he winked at me solemnly. End of chapter one,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Chapter two. I think that at the time none of
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: us quite believed in the time machine. The fact is
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: the time Traveler was one of those men who are
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: too clever to be believed. You never felt that you
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: saw all round him, you always suspected some subtle reserve,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: some ingenuity in ambush behind his lucid frankness. Had Philby
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: shown the model and explained the matter in the time
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Traveler's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: for we should have perceived his motives. A pork butcher
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: could understand Philby. But the time Traveler had more than
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Things that would have made the frame of a less
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: They were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg shell china.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So I didn't think any of us said very much
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: about time traveling in the interval between that Thursday and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the next, though its odd potentialities ran no doubt in
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: most of our minds, its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the curious possibilities of an acronism, and of utter confusion,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: with the trick of the model that I remember discussing
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: with the medical man, whom I met on Friday at
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar thing
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: at Tubingen and laid considerable stress on the blowing out
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of the candle, but how the trick was done he
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: could not explain. The next Thursday, I went again to Richmond.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I suppose I was one of the time Traveler's most
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: constant guests, and, arriving late, found for or five men
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: already assembled in his drawing room. The medical man was
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: one hand and his watch in the other. I looked
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: around for the time traveler. And it's half past seven now,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: said the medical man. I suppose we'd better have dinner.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Where's said I, naming our host? You've just come. It's
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: note to lead off with dinner at seven. If he's
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: not back, says he'll explain when he comes. It seems
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a pity to let the dinner spoil, said the editor
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of a well known daily paper, and thereupon the doctor
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: rang the bell. The psychologist was the only person besides
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the doctor and myself who had attended the previous dinner.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: The other men were blank. The editor aforementioned, a certain journalist,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: and another a quiet, shy man with a beard, whom
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: never opened his mouth. All the evening there was some
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: speculation at the dinner table about the time traveler's absence,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and I suggested time traveling in a half jockular spirit.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The editor wanted that explain to him, and the psychologist
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: volunteered a wooden account of the ingenious paradox and trick
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: we had witnessed that day week. He was in the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and saw it first. Hullo, I said, at last, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: the door opened wider and the time traveler stood before us.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I gave a cry of surprise. Good heavens man, what's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the matter? Cried the medical man who saw him next,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and the whole tableful turned towards the door. He was
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and smeared with green down the sleeves. His hair disordered and,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: as it seemed to me, grayer, either with dust and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: dirt or because its color had actually faded. His face
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: was ghastly pale. His chin had a brown cut on it,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a cut half healed. His expression was haggard and drawn,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: as by intense suffering. For a moment, he hesitated in
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Then he came into the room. He walked with just
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: such a limp as I have seen in footsore traps.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: He said not a word, but came painfully to the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: table and made a motion towards the wine. The editor
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: filled a glass of champagne and pushed it towards him.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: He drained it, and it seemed to do him good,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: for he looked round the table and the ghost of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: his old smile flickered across his face. What on earth
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: have you been up to, man, said the doctor. The
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: time traveler did not seem to hear. Don't let me
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: disturb you, he said, with a certain faltering articulation. I'm
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: all right. He stopped, held out his glass for more,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and took it off at a draft. That's good, he said.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: His eyes grew brighter, and a faint color came into
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: feeling his way. Among his words, I'm going to wash
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Save me some of that mutton. I'm starving for a
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: bit of meat. He looked across at the editor, who
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: The editor began a question, Tell you, presently, said the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: time traveler. I'm funny. I'll be right in a minute.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: He put down his glass and walked towards the staircase door. Again.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: his footfall, and standing up in my place. I saw
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: his feet as he went out. He had nothing on
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: them but a pair of tattered, blood stained socks. Then
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the door closed upon him. I had half a mind
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to follow till I remembered how he detested any fuss
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: about himself. For a minute, perhaps my mind was wool gathering.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Then remarkable behavior of an eminent scientist. I heard the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: editor say, thinking after his wont in headlines, and this
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: brought my attention back to the bright dinner table. What's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the game, said the journalist. Has he been doing the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: amateur cadger, I don't follow. I met the eye of
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the psychologist and read my own interpretation in his face.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I thought of the time traveler limping painfully upstairs. I
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: don't think any one else had noticed his lameness. The
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: first to recover completely from this surprise was the medical
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: man who rang the bell. The time traveler hated to
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: have servants waiting at dinner for a hot plate. At
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: that the editor turned to his knife and fork with
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a grunt, and the silent man followed suit. The dinner
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: gaps of wonderment, and then The editor got fervent in
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: his curiosity. Does our friend eke out his modest income
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: with a crossing? Or has he his nebuchadnazar phases? He inquired.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I feel assured. It's this business of the time machine,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I said, took up the psychologist's account of our previous meeting.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: The new guests were frankly incredulous. The editor raised objections,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: what was this time traveling? A man couldn't cover himself
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he? And then,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Hadn't he any clothes brushes in the future. The journalist too,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: would not believe at any price and join the editor
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: They were both the new kind of journalist, very joyous,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: irreverent young men. Our special correspondent in the Day after
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow reports the journalist was saying, or rather shouting, when
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the time traveler came back. He was dressed in ordinary
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained of
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the change that had startled me, I say, said the editor, hilariously,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: These chaps here, say you have been traveling into the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: middle of next week. Tell us all about little Roseberry,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: will you? What will you take for the lot? The
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: time traveler came to the place reserved for him without
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a word. He smiled quietly in his old way. Where's
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: my mutton? He said? What a treat it is to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: stick a fork into meat again, Story cried the editor.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Story be damned, said the time traveler. I want something
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to eat. I won't say a word until I get
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: some peptone into my arteries. Thanks and the salt. One word,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: said I Have you been time traveling? Yes, said the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: time traveler, with his mouth full, nodding his head. I'd
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: give a shilling a line for a verbatim note, said
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the editor. The time traveler pushed his glass towards the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: silent man and rang it with his finger nail, at
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: which the silent man, who had been staring at at
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: his face, started convulsively and poured in wine. The rest
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part. Sudden
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: questions kept rising to my lips, and I dare say
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: it was the same with the others. The journalist tried
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hetty Potter.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The time Traveler devoted his attention to his dinner and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: displayed the appetite of a trap. The medical man smoked
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: a cigarette and watched the time Traveler through his eyelashes.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: At last, the time Traveler pushed his plate away and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: looked round us. I suppose I must apologize, he said,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I was simply starving. I've had a most amazing time.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: He reached out his hand for a cigar and cut
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the end. But come into the smoking room. It's too
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: long a story to tell. Over greasy plates and ringing
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the bell. In passing, he led the way into the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: adjoining room. You have told blank and Dash and chose
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: about the machine, he said to me, leaning back in
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: his easy chair and naming the three new guests. But
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the thing's a mere paradox, said the editor. I can't
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: argue to night. I don't mind telling you the story,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: but I can't argue I will, he went on, tell
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you the story of what has happened to me if
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: you like. But you must refrain from interruptions. I want
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to tell it badly. Most of it will sound like lying,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: so be it. It's true, every word of it all the same.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: then I've lived eight days, such days as no human
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: being ever lived before. I'm nearly worn out, but I
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions. Is
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: it agreed? Agreed, said the editor, and the rest of
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: us echoed agreed. And with that the time traveler began
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: his story as I've set it forth. He sat back
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: he got more animated in writing it down. I feel,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: with only too much keenness, the inadequacy of pen and ink,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and above all, my own inadequacy to express its quality.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: You read, I will suppose attentively enough. But you cannot
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: his story. Most of us hearers were in shadow for
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the candles in the smoking room had not been lighted,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and only the face of the journalist and the legs
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: of the silent man from the knees downward were illuminated.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: At first, we glanced now and again at each other.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: After a time we ceased to do that and looked
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: only at the time traveler's face. End of Chapter two,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Chapter three. I told some of you last Thursday of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the principles of the time machine, and showed you the
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: actual thing itself incomplete in the workshop. There. It is
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: now a little travel worn truly, and one of the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: ivory bars is cracked and a brass rail bent, but
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the rest of it sound enough. I expected to finish
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: it on Friday. But on Friday, when the putting together
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: had to get remade, so that the thing was not
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: day that the first of all time machines began its career.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I gave it at last tap, tried all the screws again,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: same wonder at what will come next as I felt.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Then I took the starting lever in one hand and
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the stopping one in the other. Pressed the first, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: almost immediately the second, I seemed to reel. I felt
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: a nightmare sensation of falling, and looking around, I saw
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened. For a moment,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: noted the clock a moment before, as it seemed it
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: had stood at a minute or so past ten. Now
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: it was nearly half past three. I drew a breath,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and went dark. Missus Watchett came in and walked, apparently
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: took her a minute or so to traverse the place,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: but to me, she seemed to shoot across the room
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: extreme position. The night came like the turning out of
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The laboratory
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: grew faint and hazy, then fainter and even fainter. Tomorrow
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: night came black, then day again, night again, day again,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: faster and faster still, and Eddie murmur filled my ears,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and a strange, dumb, confusedness descended on my mind. I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time traveling.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that one has upon a switchback of a helpless headlong motion.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: smash as I put on pace. Night followed day, like
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: it every minute, and every minute, marking a day. I
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: suppose the laboratory had been destroyed, and I had come
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but I was already going too fast to be conscious
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: of any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: through her quarters from new to full, and had a
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: into one continuous grayness. The sky took on a wonderful
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: deepness of blue, a splendid, luminous color like that of
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: early twilight. The jerking sun became a streak of fire,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: a brilliant arch in space, the moon a fainter, fluctuating band,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: and I could see nothing of the stars save now
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue. The
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: hillside upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: rose above me, gray and dim. I saw trees growing
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and changing, like puffs of vapor, now brown, now green.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: They grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: buildings rise up, faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: The whole surface of the earth seemed changed, melting, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: from solstice to solstice in a minute or less, and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: that consequently my pace was over a year a minute,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: and minute by minute, the white snow flashed across the
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: world and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: green of spring. The unpleasant sensations of the start were
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: less poignant now they merged at last into a kind
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked, indeed, a clumsy swaying of
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the machine for which I was unable to account, But
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: my mind was too confused to attend to it. So,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: a certain curiosity, and therewith a certain dread, until at
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of humanity, What wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization I
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: thought might not appear. When I came to look nearly
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: my eyes, I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: more massive than any buildings of our own time, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: yet it seemed built of glimmer and mist. I saw
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: a richer green flow up the hillside and remain there
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: without any wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the earth seemed very fair, And so my mind came
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: round to the business of stopping. The peculiar risk lay
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: in the possibility of my finding some substance in the
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: space which I or the machine occupied. So long as
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I traveled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I was, so to speak, attenuated, was slipping like a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: vapor through the interstices of intervening substances. But to come
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to a stop involve the jamming of myself, molecule by
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: molecule into whatever lay in my way. Meant bringing my
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: that a profound chemical reaction, possibly a far reaching explosion,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: would result and blow myself and my apparatus out of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: all possible dimensions, into the unknown. This possibility had occurred
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: to me again and again while I was making the machine,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: one of the risks a man has got to take.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Now the risk was inevitable. I no longer saw it
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: in the same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: had absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: could never stop, and with a gust of petulance, I
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: resolved to stop forthwith, like an impatient fool, I lugged
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: over the lever, and incontinently the thing went wreathing over,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: and I was flung headlong through the air. There was
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: a soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: still seemed gray, But presently I remarked that the confusion
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: was on what seemed to be a little lawn in
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: under the beating of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: hung in a cloud over the machine and drove along
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: the ground like smoke. In a moment, I was wet
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: to the skin. Fine hospitality, said I to a man
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: who has traveled innumerable years to see you. Presently, I
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: thought what a fool I was to get wet. I
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: was invisible. My sensations would be hard to describe. As
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: birch tree touched its shoulder. It was of a white
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: marble in shape, something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: instead of being carried vertically at the sides were spread
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: to me, was of bronze, and was thick with vertigris.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It chast that the face was towards me. The sightless
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: eyes seemed to watch me. There was the faint shadow
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather worn,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: looking at it for a little space, half a minute perhaps,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: as the hail drove before it, denser or thinner. At last,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I tore my eyes from it for a moment, and
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: the sky was lightning with the promise of the sun.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn?
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: had grown into a common passion? What if in this
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: into something inhuman, unsympathetic and overwhelmingly powerful. I might seem
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: some old world savage animal, only the more dreadful and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: disgusting for our common likeness, a foul creature, to be
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: incontinently slain. Already I saw other vast shapes, huge buildings
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: with intricate parapets, and tall columns, with a wooded hillside
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: dimly creeping in upon me. Through the lessening storm. I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the time machine and strove hard to readjust it. As
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: I did so, the shafts of the sun smote through
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: the thunder storm. The gray downpour was swept aside and vanished,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: like the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings about
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: of the thunder storm, and picked out in white by
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: the unmelted hailstones piled along theses. I felt naked in
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and will swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappling fiercely
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: wrist and knee with the machine. It gave under my
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: one hand on the saddle, the other on the lever.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I stood, panting heavily, in attitude to mount again. But
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: with this recovery of a prompt retreat, my courage recovered.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: of the remote future. In a circular opening high up
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: seen me, and their faces were directed towards me. Then
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the white sphinx, were the heads and shoulders of men running.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: He was a slight creature, perhaps four feet high, clad
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: leather belt. Sandals or buskins I could not clearly distinguish
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: which were on his feet. His legs were bare to
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: noticed for the first time how warm the air was.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: more beautiful kind of consumptive, that hectic beauty of which
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: we used to hear so much. At this sight of him,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: machine end of chapter three, Chapter four. In another moment,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: we were standing face to face I and this fragile
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: he turned to the two others who were following him,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: and liquid tongue. There were others coming, and presently a
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. It
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: came into my head oddly enough that my voice was
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: too harsh and deep for them, So I shook my head, and,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: pointing to my ears, shook it again, he came a
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: They wanted to make sure I was real. There was
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: in these pretty little people that inspired confidence, a graceful gentleness,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: them about like nine pins. But I made a sudden
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: motion to warn them when I saw their little pink
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: hands feeling the time machine happily. Then, when it was
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: not too late, I thought of a danger I had
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: motion and put these in my pocket. Then I turned
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: again to see what I could do in the way
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: of communication. And then, looking more nearly into their features,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I saw some further peculiarities in their dressed in China
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to a sharp end at the neck and cheek. There
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and their ears were singularly minute. Their mouths were small,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: And this may seem egotism on my part. I fancied
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: even that there was a certain lack of the interest
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I might have expected in them, as they made no
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I began the conversation. I pointed to the time machine
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: and to myself, then, hesitating for a moment, how to
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: express time, I pointed to the sun at once. A
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: quaintly pretty little figure in checkered purple and white followed
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: my gesture and then astonished me by imitating the sound
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: of thunder. For a moment I staggered, though the import
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: of his gesture was plain enough. The question come into
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: my mind abruptly. Were these creatures fools? You may hardly
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: understand how it took me. You see, I had always
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: anticipated that the people of the year eight hundred and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: two thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: in knowledge art everything. Then one of them suddenly asked
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: me a question that showed him to be on the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: intellectual level of One of our five year old children
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: asked me, in fact, if I had come from the
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: sun in a thunder storm, it let loose the judgment
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail, light limbs
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: For a moment I felt that I had built the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: time machine in vain. I nodded, pointed to the sun,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and bowed. Then came one, laughing towards me, carrying a
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: chain of beautiful flows hours altogether new to me, and
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: put it about my neck. The idea was received with
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: melodious applause, and presently they were all running to and
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me, until
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: flowers countless years of culture had created. Then some one
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: which had seemed to watch me all the while with
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast gray edifice
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: of fretted stone. As I went with them, the memory
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: posterity came with irresistible merriment to my mind. The building
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: little people, and with the big open portals that yawned
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: before me, shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: of the waxen petals. They grew scattered as if wild,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: among the variegated shrubs, but as I say, I did
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: not examine them closely. At this time, the time machine
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons. The
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: and it struck me that they were very badly broken
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and weather worn. Several more bright the clad people met
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: me in the doorway, and so we entered. I dressed
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: in dingy nineteenth century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft colored
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: robes and shining white limbs. In a melodious whirl of
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: laughter and laughing speech. The big doorway opened into a
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: proportionately great hall, hung with brown. The roof was in shadow,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: and the windows, partially glazed with colored glass and partially unglazed,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: admitted a tempered light. The floor was made up of
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: nor slabs, blocks, and it was so much worn, as
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I judged by the going to and fro of past generations,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: as to be deeply channeled. Along the more frequented ways
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and upon these were heaps of fruits, saw I recognized
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, But for
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: the most part they were strange. Between the tables was
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these. My conductors
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise, with a
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: pretty absence of ceremony, they began to eat the fruit
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: with their hands, flinging peel and stalks and so forth
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: into the round openings in the sides of the tables.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I was not loath to follow their example, for I
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so, I surveyed
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: the hall at my leisure, and perhaps the thing that
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stained glass windows,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: and the curtains that hung across the lower end were
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: thick with dust, and it caught my eye that the
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: corner of the marble te near me was fractured. Nevertheless,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: perhaps a couple of hundred people dining in the hall,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and most of them, seated as near to me as
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: they could come, were watching me with interest, their little
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material. Fruit,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: by the bye was all their diet. These people of
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I was
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: to be frugivous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: sheep dogs had followed the Ichtheosaurus into extinction. But the
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: fruits were very delightful. One in particular, had seemed to
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: be in season all the time I was there. A
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: flowery thing in a three sided husk was especially good,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and I made it my stable. At first I was
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: puzzled by all these strange fruits and by the strange
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: flowers I saw, But later I began to perceive their
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: import However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: in the distant future. Now. So soon as my appetite
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: of these up, I began a series of interrogative sounds
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: or inextinguishable laughter. But presently a fair haired little creature
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: had to chatter and explain the business at great length
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: to each other, and my first attempts to make the
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immensem amount
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: and persistent, and presently I had a score of noun
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: substantives at least at my command, and then I got
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: to demonstrate pronouns and even the verb to eat. But
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: it was slow work, and the little people soon tired
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and wanted to get away from my interrogations. So I determined,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: I found they were before long, for I never met
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: people more indolent or more easily fatigued. A queer thing
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the lack of interest they would come to me with
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: eager cries of astonishment, like children. But like children, they
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: would soon stop examining me and wander away after some
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: other toy. The dinner and my conversation beginnings ended. I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: it for the first time that almost all those who
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: how speedily I came to disregard these little people. I
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: went out through the portal into the sunlit world again.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: As soon as my hunger was satisfied. I was continually
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: meeting more of these men of the future, who would
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: follow me at a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: again to my own devices. The calm of evening was
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: upon the world as I emerged from the Great Hall,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: and the scene was lit by the warm glow of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: the setting sun. At first, things were very confusing. Everything
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: was so entirely different from the world I had known,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: even the flowers. The big building I had left was
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: perhaps a mile in a half away from which I
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: could get a wider view of this our planet. In
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: the year eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: A d for that I should explain was the date
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: the little dials of my machine recorded. As I walked.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: I was watched for every impression that could possibly help
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: to explain the condition of ruinous splendor in which I
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: found the world. For ruinous. It was a little way
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: granite bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps. Amidst which were thick
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: heaps of very beautiful pagoda like plants, nettles, possibly but
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves and incapable of stinging.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: It was evidently that derelict remains of some vast structure.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: To what end built I could not determine. It was
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: here that I was destined, at a later date to
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: have a very strange experience, the first intimation of a
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: still stranger discovery. But of that I will speak in
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: its proper place. Looking round with a sudden thought from
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: a terrace on which I rested for a while, I
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: realized that there were no small houses to be seen.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Here and there among the greenery were palace like buildings,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: but the house and the cottage, which formed such characteristic
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: features of our own English landscape, had disappeared. Communism, said
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I to myself, And on the heels of that came
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: another thought. I looked at the half dozen little figures
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: that were following me. Then in a flash, I perceived
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: that all had the same form of costume, the same soft,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: may seem strange, perhaps that I had not noticed this before,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: but everything was so strange now I saw the fact
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: each other. These people of the future were alike, and
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: the children seemed to my eyes to be but the
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: miniatures of their parents. I judged then that the children
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: of that time were extremely precocious physically at least, and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion, seeing the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: ease and security in which these people were living. I
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was, after all,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: what one would expect for the strength of a man
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: and the softness of a woman. The institution of the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: family and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: of an age of physical force, where population is balanced
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: and abundant. Much child bearing becomes an evil rather than
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: a blessing. To the state where violence comes but rarely
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: and offspring are secure, there is less necessity. Indeed, there
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: is no necessity for an efficient family, and the specialization
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: We see some beginnings of this even in our own time,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and in this future age it was complete. This, i
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: I was to appreciate how far it fell short of
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: the reality. While I was musing upon these things, my
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like a
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: well under a cupula. I thought, in a transitory way,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: of the oddness of well still existing, and then resumed
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: towards the top of the hill, and as my walking
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: powers were evidently miraculous. I was presently left alone for
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: I pushed on up to the crest. There I found
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust, and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: half smothered in soft moss. The armrests cast and filed
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: into the resemblance of griffin's heads. I sat down on it,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: and I surveyed the broad view of our old world
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: under the sunset of that long day. It was as
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: sweet and fair a view as I have ever seen.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: The sun had already gone below the horizon, and the
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: in which the river lay like a band of burnished steel.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: I have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: ill occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: figure in the waste garden of the earth. Here and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: there came the sharp vertical line of some cupula or obelisk.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rites, no
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: evidences of agriculture. The whole earth had become a garden.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: So watching I began to put my interpretation upon the
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: things I had seen, and as it shaped itself to
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: me that evening my interpretation was something. In this way.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Afterwards I found I had got only a half truth,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: the sunset of mankind. For the first time, I began
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: which we are present, engaged, and yet come to think
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: it is a logical consequence. Enough strength is the outcome
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: of need. Security sets a premium on feebleness. The work
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: of ameliorating the conditions of life, the true civilizing process
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that makes life more and more secure, had gone steadily
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: over nature had followed another. Things that are now mere
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: dreams had become projects, deliberately put in hand and carried forward.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: And the harvest was what I saw. After all, the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: a little department of the field of human disease. But
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: even so it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: they can. We improve our favorite plants and animals, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: how few they are, gradually by selective breeding. Now a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: new and better peach, Now a seedless grape, now a
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: sweeter and larger flower, Now a more convenient breed of cattle.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: We improve them gradually because our ideals are vague and tentative,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: and our knowledge is very limited, because nature, too is
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: this will be better organized, and still better, that is
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: the drift of the current. In spite of the eddies,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co operating.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of nature.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: balance of animal and vegetable to suit our human needs.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: well done. Indeed, for all time, in the space of
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: time across which my machine had leaped, the air was
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi. Everywhere
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers. Brilliant butterflies flew
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: any contagious diseases during all my stay, and I shall
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: have to tell you later that even the processes of
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: putrification and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Social triumphs, too had been effected. I saw mankind housed
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: advertisement traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: our world was gone. It was natural, on that golden
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: evening that I should jump at the idea of a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been met,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: I guessed, and population had ceased to increase. But with
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: this change and condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. What,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: cause of human intelligence and vigor, hardship and freedom. Conditions
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: under which the active, strong and subtle survive and the
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: weaker go to the wall. Conditions that put a premium
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self restraint,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: patience and decision, and the institution of the family, and
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: the emotions that arise therein the fierce jealousy, the tenderness
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: for offspring, parental self devotion, all found their justification and
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: support in the imminent dangers of the young. Now where
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: are these imminent dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: it will grow against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: passion of all sorts, unnecessary things now and things that
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: pleasant life. I thought of the physical slightness of the people,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: their lack of intelligence, and those big, abundant ruins, and
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of nature.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: For after the battle comes quiet humanity had been strong, energetic,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: the reaction of the altered conditions. Under the new conditions
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of perfect comforts and security, that restless energy that with
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: us is strength would become weakness. Even in our own time,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: for instance, are no great help, may even be hindrances
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: to a civilized man, And in a state of physical
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: balance and security, power intellectual as well as physical, would
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: be out of place. For countless years, I judge, there
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: have been no danger of war or solitary violence, no
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: of constitution, no need of toil for such a life.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: What we should call the weak are as well equipped
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: as the strong are, indeed no longer weak. Better equipped
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: energy for which there was no outlet. No doubt, the
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: before it settled down into perfect harmony with the conditions
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: under which it lived, the flourish of that triumph which
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: began the last great peace. This has ever been the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: fate of energy and security. It takes to art and
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: to eroticism, and then come languor and decay. Even this
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: artistic impetus would at last die away. Had almost died
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: in the time I saw to adorn themselves with flowers,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to dance, to sing in the sunlight. So much was
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: left of the artistic spirit, and no more even that
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: And it seemed to me that here was that hateful
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: grindstone broken at last. As I stood there in the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: gathering dark, I thought that in this simple explanation I
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: had mastered the problem of the world, mastered the whole
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: would account for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: and plausible enough, as most wrong theories are. End of
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Chapter four, Chapter five. As I stood there musing over
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: light in the northeast. The bright little figure ceased to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: move about below. A noiseless owl flitted by, and I
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: shivered with the chill of the night. I determined to
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: descend and find where I could sleep. I looked for
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: the building I knew. Then My eye traveled along to
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the figure of the white sphinx, upon the pedestal of bronze,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: growing distinct. As the light of the rising moon grew brighter,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I could see the silver birch against it. There was
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: And there was the little lawn. I looked at the
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency. No, said
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: I stoutly to myself. That was not the lawn. But
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: it was the lawn, for the white, leprous face of
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: the sphinx was towards it. Can you imagine what I
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: felt as this conviction came home to me. But you
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: cannot The time machine was gone at once, like a
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: lash across the face. Came the possibility of losing my
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: own age, of being left helpless in this strange news world.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: I could feel it grit me at the throat and
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: stop my breathing. In another moment, I was in a
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my face.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: cheek and chin. All the time I ran, I was
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: saying to myself, they have moved it a little, pushed
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: under the bushes, out of the way. Nevertheless, I ran
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: with all my might, all the time, with the certainty
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: that sometimes comes with excessive dread. I knew that such
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: assurance was folly. Knew instinctively that the machine was removed
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: out of my reach. My breath came with pain. I
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: suppose I covered the whole distance from the hillcrest to
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the little lawn, two miles, perhaps in ten minutes. And
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: I am not a young man. I cursed aloud as
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I ran at my confident folly in leaving the machine,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: wasting good breath. Thereby, I cried aloud, and none answered.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: Not a creature seemed to be stirring in the moonlit world.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: When I reached the lawn, my worst fears were realized.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: Not a trace of the thing was to be seen.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: I felt faint and cold. When I faced the empty
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: my hair. Above me towered the sphynx upon the bronze pedestal, white,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: shining leprous in the light of the rising moon. It
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay. I might
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: felt assured of their physical intellectual inadequacy. That is what
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: dismayed me, the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power through
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: whose intervention my invention had vanished. Yet for one thing,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: I felt assured, unless some other age had produced its
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: exact duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: The attachment of the levers. I will show you the
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: method later prevented anyone from tampering with it in that way.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: When they were removed, it had moved and was hid
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: only in space. But then where could it be? I
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: all round the Sphinx, and startling some white animal that,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: in the dim light I took for a small deer.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: I remember too late that night beating the bushes with
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: from the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: anguish of mind, I went down to the great Building
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: of Stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: I slipped on the uneven floor and fell over one
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: a match and went on past the dusty curtains of
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: which I have told you. Then I found a second
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: great hall, covered with cushions, upon which perhaps a score
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: or so of the little people were sleeping. I have
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: suddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: the splutter and flare of a match, For they had
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: forgotten about matches. Where is my time machine? I began
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: shaking them up together. I must have been very queer
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: When I saw them standing round me, it came into
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: my head that I was doing as foolish a thing
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: as it was possible for me to do under the circumstances,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: in trying to revive the sensation of fear. For reasoning
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: from their daylight behavior, I thought that fear must be forgotten. Abruptly,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: people over in my course, went blundering across the big
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: dining hall again. Out under the moonlight. I heard cries
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: of terror, and their little feet running and stumbling this way.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: And that I do not remember all I did as
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. I
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: felt hopelessly caught off from my own kind a strange
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: and fro screaming and crying upon God and fate. I
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: of despair wore away, of looking in this impossible place,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: and that of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: creatures in the black shadows. At last, of lying on
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: when I woke again it was full day, and a
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: within reach of my arm. I sat up in the
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: got there, and why I had such a profound sense
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: of desertion and despair. Then things came clear in my mind.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: With the plain, reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: fairly in the face. I saw the wild folly of
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: my frenzy over night, and I could reason with myself.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: Suppose the worst, I said, Suppose ose the machine altogether lost,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: perhaps destroyed. It behooves me to be calm and patient,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: to learn the way of the people to get a
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: clear idea of the method of my loss and the
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: means of getting materials and tools, so that in the end,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: perhaps I may make another That would be my only hope,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: perhaps but better than despair. And after all it was
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: a beautiful and curious world. But probably the machine had
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: find its hiding place, and recover it by force or cunning.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: about me, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: and travel soiled. The freshness of the morning made me
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: desire an equal freshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: as I went about my busines, I found myself wondering
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: at my intense excitement. Over night, I made a careful
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: examination of the ground about the little lawn. I wasted
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: some time in futile questionings, conveyed as well as I
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: was able to such of the little people as came by.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: They all failed to understand my gestures. Some were simply stolid,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: some thought it was a jest and laughed at me.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: I had the hardest task in the world to keep
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was a
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: my perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: the sphinx and the marks of my feet, where on
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: arrival I had struggled with the overturned machine. There were
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: other signs of removal about, with queer, narrow footprints, like
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: think I have said of bronze. It was not a
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: mere block, but highly decorated, with deep framed panels on
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: either side. I went and wrapped at these. The pedestal
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: was hollow. Examining the panels with care, I found them
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: but possibly the panels if they were doors, as I supposed,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: opened from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: It took no very great mental effort to infer that
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: my time machine was inside that pedestal. But how it
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: got there was a different problem. I saw the heads
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: of two orange clad people coming through the bushes and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: under some blossom covered apple trees towards me. I turned
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: and then, pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: intimate my wish to open it. But at my first
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: gesture towards this, they behaved very oddly. I don't know
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate minded woman,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: it is how she would look. They went off as
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: if they had received the last possible insult. I tried
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: a sweet looking little chap in white next, with exactly
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: of myself. But as you know, I wanted the time machine,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: and I tried him once more. As he turned off
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: like the others, my temper got the better of me.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: In three strides, I was after him, had him by
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: the loose part of his robe round the neck, and
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: began dragging him towards the sphynx. Then I saw the
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: I let him go, but I was not beaten yet.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: thought I heard something stir inside. To be explicit, I
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: thought I heard a sound like a chuckle. But I
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: must have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: from the river and came and hammered till I had
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people must have
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: At last, hot and tired, I sat down to watch
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: the place. But I was too restless to watch long.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: I am too occidental for a long vigil. I could
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: work at a problem for years, But to wait inactive
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: for twenty four hours, that is another matter. I got
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: up after a time and began walking aimlessly through the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: bushes towards the hill. Again. Patience, said I to myself.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: If you want your machine again, you must leave that
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: it's little good. You're wrecking their bronze panels, and if
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: they don't, you will get it back as soon as
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: you can ask for it. To sit among all those
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: unknown things before. A puzzle like that is hopeless. That
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: way lies monomania. Face this world, learn its ways, watch it,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: be careful of two hasty guesses at its meaning. In
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the end you will find clues to it all. Then
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: suddenly the humor of the situation came into my mind,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: the thought of the years I had spent in study
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: and toil to get into the future age, and now
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: my own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: aloud going through the Big Palace. It seemed to me
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: that the little people avoided me. It may have been
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: my fancy, or it may have had something to do
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: of them, And in the course of a day or two,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: things got back to the old footing. I made what
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: progress I could in the language, and in addition I
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: subtle point, or their language was excessively simple, almost exclusively
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I determined to put the thought of my time machine
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: as much as possible, in a corner of memory, until
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: a natural way. Yet a certain feeling you may understand,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: tethered me in a circle of a few miles round
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: the point of my arrival. So far as I could see,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Thames Valley. From every hill I climbed, I saw the
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and style,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom laden
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: trees and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like silver,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: and beyond the land rose into blue, undulating hills, and
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: feature which presently attracted my attention was the presence of
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: certain circular wells, several as it seemed to me of
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: a very great depth. One lay by the path up
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: the hill which I had followed during my first walk.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: and protected by a little cupula from the rain. Sitting
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: by the side of these wells and peering down into
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: But in all of them I heard a certain sound,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: a thud, thud, thud, like the beating of some big engine,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: and I discovered from the flaring of the matches that
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: and instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: sucked swiftly out of sight. After a time too, I
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: and there upon the slopes for above them there was
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: often just such a flicker in the air as one
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: sees on a hot day above a sun's scorched beach.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong. And here
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: I must admit that I learned very little of drains
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: and bells, and modes of conveyance and the like conveyances
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: during my time in this real future. In some of
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: these visions of Utopia's and coming times which I have read,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: there is a vast amount of detail about building and
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: social arrangements and so forth. But while such details are
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveler.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Amid such realities as I found here, conceive the tale
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: of London, which a Negro fresh from Central Africa would
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: take back to his tribe. What would he know of
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: of the parcels delivery company, and postal orders and the like.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Yet we at least should be willing enough to explain
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: these things to him. And even of what he knew,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: how much could he make his untraveled friend either apprehend
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: or believe? Then? Think how narrow the gap between a
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Negro and a white man of our times, and how
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: wide the interval between myself and these of the golden age.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: I was sensible of much which was unseen, and which
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: contributed to my comfort. But say, for a general impression
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very little
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: of the difference to your mind. In the matter of Sepulcher,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: for instance, I could see no signs of crematorise arrea,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: that possibly there might be cemeteries or crematoria somewhere beyond
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: the range of my explorings. This again was a question
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: I deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: first entirely defeated. Upon the point the thing puzzled me
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and I was led to make a further remark, which
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: puzzled me still more, that aged and infirm among these
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: people there were none. I must confess that my satisfaction
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: with my first theories of an automatic civilization and a
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: of no other let me put my difficulties. The several
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: dining halls, and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: no appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metal work. Somehow,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: such things must be made, and the little people displayed
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: in making love in a half playful fashion, in eating
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: kept going. Then again, about the time machine, something I
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: knew not what had taken it into the hollow pedestal
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: of the white Sphinx. Why, for the life of me
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: I could not imagine those waterless wells too, those flickering pillars.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: I felt I lacked a clue. I felt, how shall
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: I put it? Suppose you found an inscription with sentences
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: here and there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: others made up of words of letters, even absolutely unknown
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: to you. Well, on the third day of my visit,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: that was how the world of eight hundred and two thousand,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: seven hundred and one presented itself to me. That day too,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: I made a friend of a sort. It happened that,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: as I was watching some of the little people bathing
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: in a shallow one of them was seized with a
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: cramp and began drifting down stream. The main current ran
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of the
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: of seeing she was all right. Before I left her,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: I had got to such a low estimate of her
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: in that. However, I was wrong. This happened in the morning.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: In the afternoon, I met my little woman, as I
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: believe it was, as I was returning towards my center
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: from an exploration, and she received me with cries of
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: my imagination very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: any rate, I did my best to display my appreciation
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: of the gift. We were soon seated together in a
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: little stone arbor, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have done.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: and found that her name was Weena, which, though I
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate. Enough. That
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: was the beginning of a queer friendship, which lasted a
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: week and ended. As I will tell you. She was
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: She tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: journey out and about. It went to my heart to
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: tire her down and leave her at last, exhausted and
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: world had to be mastered. I had not, I said
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: to myself, come into the future to carry on a
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: very great. Her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and I think altogether I had as much trouble less
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless, she was somehow a great comfort.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a mere childish affection that made
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: her cling to me. Until it was too late. I
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: when I left her, Nor until it was too late
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: did I clearly understand what she was to me. For
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: by merely seeming fond of me and showing in her weak,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: futile way that she cared for me, the little dull
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: of a creature presently gave my return to the neighborhood
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: and I would watch for her tiny figure of white
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: and gold so soon as I came over the hill.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: It was from her, too that I learned that fear
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: For once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness, to
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered, then,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: among other things, that these little people gathered into the
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: great houses after dark and slept in droves. To enter
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: upon them without a light was to put them into
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: or one sleeping alone within doors after dark. Yet I
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: of that fear, And in spite of Weena's distress, I
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes. It troubled
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: including the last night of all, she slept with her
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips away
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: from me as I speak of her. It must have
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: been the night before her rescue that I was awakened
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably, that
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: I was drowned, and that sea anemonies were feeling over
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: and with an odd fancy that some grayish animal had
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: was that dim gray hour when things are just creeping
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: out of darkness, when everything is colorless and clear cut
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: and yet unreal. I got up and went down into
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: the Great Hall, and so out upon the flagstones in
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: front of the palace. I thought I would make a
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: virtue of necessity and see the sunrise. The moon was setting,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: were mingled in a ghastly half light. The bushes were
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: inky black, the ground a somber gray, the sky colorless
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: see ghosts. There were several times, as I scanned the
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: slope I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a solitary, white, apelike creature running rather quickly up the hill,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: and once near the ruins, I saw a leash of
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: them carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: not see what became of them. It seemed that they
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct. You
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: must understand I was feeling that chill, uncertain early morning
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: feeling you may have known. I doubted my eyes as
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: day came on, and its vivid coloring returned upon the
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: world once more, I scanned the view keenly, but I
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: creatures of the half light. They must have been ghosts,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: I said, I wonder whence they dated. For a queer
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: notion of grand Ellen's came into my head and amused me.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: If each generation die and leave ghosts. He argued, the
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: they would have grown innumerable some eight hundred thousand years since,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: and it was no great wonder to see four at once.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: these figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: out of my head. I associated them in some indefinite
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: way with the white animal I had startled in my
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: first passionate search for the time machine. But Weena was
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind. I
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: think I have said how much hotter than our own
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: was the weather of this Golden age. I cannot account
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: for it. It may be that the Sun was hotter,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: or the Earth nearer the Sun. It is usual to
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: assume that the Sun will go on cooling steadily in
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: the future, But people unfamiliar with such speculations as those
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: of the younger Darwin, forget that the planets must ultimately
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: fall back one by one into the parent body. As
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: these catastrophes occur, the Sun will blaze with renewed energy,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: and it may be that some inner planet had suffered
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Sun was very much hotter than we know it well.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: One very hot morning, my fourth I think, as I
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: colossal ruin near the Great House where I slept and fed,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: there happened this strange thing. Clambering among these heaps of masonry,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: I found a narrow gallery whose end and side windows
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: were blocked. I fallen masses of stone. By contrast with
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: the brilliancy outside. It seemed at first impenetrably dark to me.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: I entered it, groping for the change from light to
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: blackness made spots of color swim before me. Suddenly I halted,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: spell bound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: the daylight without was watching me. Out of the darkness.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: to my mind, and then I remembered that strange terror
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: voice was harsh and ill controlled. I put out my
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: hand and touched something soft. At once, the eyes darted sideways,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: and something white ran past me. I turned with my
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: heart in my mouth, and saw a queer, little apelike figure,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: My impression of it is, of course imperfect, but I
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: know it was a dull white and had strange, large
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: grayish red eyes, also that there was flaxen hair on
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: its head and down its back. But as I say,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: it went too fast for me to see distinctly, I
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: cannot even say whether it ran on all fours or
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: could not find it at first, but after a time
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: round well, like openings of which I have told you,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: to me, could this thing have vanished down the shaft?
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: I lit a match, and looking down, I saw a small, white,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: moving creature with large, bright eyes, which regarded me steadfastly
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: like a human spider. It was clambering down the wall.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: And now I saw for the first time a number
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: ladder down the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: and when I lit another the little monster had disappeared.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: I do not know how long I sat peering down
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: that well. It was not for some time that I
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I had
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: seen was human. But gradually the truth dawned on me
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: that man had not remained one species, but had differentiated
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: into two distinct animals, That my graceful children of the
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: upper world were not the sole descendants of our generation,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal thing which had flashed
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: before me was also heir to all the ages I
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: thought of the flickering pillars, and of my theory of
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: And what I wondered was this lemur doing in my
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: scheme of a perfectly balanced organization? How was it related
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: to the indolent serenity of the beautiful upper worlders? And
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: what was hidden down there at the foot of that shaft.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: I sat upon the edge of the well, telling myself
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: that at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: and withal I was absolutely afraid to go. As I hesitated,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: two of the beautiful upper world people came running in
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: They seemed distressed to find me my arm against the
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: overturned pillar peering down the well. Apparently it was considered
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: bad form to remark these apertures, for when I pointed
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: to this one and try to frame a question about
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: and turned away. But they were interested by my matches,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: again about the well, and again I failed. So presently
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: I left them, meaning to go back to Weena and
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: see what I could get from her. But my mind
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: was already in revolution. My guesses and in presses were
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. I had now
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: a clue to the import of these wells, to the
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts, to say
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: gates and the fate of the time machine. And very
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution of the
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: economic problem that had puzzled me. Here was the new view. Plainly,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: the second species of man was subterranean. There were three
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: circumstances in particular, which made me think that its rare
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: emergence above ground was the outcome of a long, continued
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: look common in most animals that live largely in the dark,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: the white fish of the Kentucky Caves, for instance. Then
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: those large eyes with that capacity for reflecting light are
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: common features of nocturnal things witness the owl and the cat.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: that hasty yet fumbling, awkward flight towards dark shadow, and
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: All reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: retina beneath my feet. Then the earth must be tunneled enormously,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: and these tunnelings were the habitats of the new race.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: slopes everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley, showed
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: how universal were its ramifications. What so natural, then, as
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: to assume that it was in this artificial underworld that
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: such work as was necessary to the comfort of the
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: daylight race was done. The notion was so plausible that
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: I at once accepted it, and went on to assume
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: the how of this splitting of the human species. I
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: daresay you will anticipate the shape of my theory, though
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: for myself I very soon felt that it fell far
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: short of the truth. At first, proceeding from the problems
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: and social difference between the capitalist and the laborer was
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: the key to the whole position. No doubt, it will
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: seem grotesque enough to you, and wildly incredible, And yet
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: even now there are existing circumstances to point that way.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: less ornamental purposes of civilization. There is the Metropolitan Railway
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: in London, for instance. There are the new electric railways,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: There are subways, There are underground workrooms and restaurants, and
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought this tendency had
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: increased till industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still increasing
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: amount of its time therein till in the end, even now,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: does not an East End worker live in such artificial
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: surface of the earth. Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: due no doubt to the increasing refinement of their education
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: of the poor, is already leading to the closing in
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: their interest of considerable portions of the surface of the land.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: shut in against intrusion. And the same widening gulf, which
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: is due to the length and expense of the higher
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: educational process, and the increased facilities for and temptations towards
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: refined habits on the part of the rich, will make
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: which at present retards the splitting of our species along
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So in
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: the end, above ground you must have the halves pursuing
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the havenots,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labor.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Once they were there, they would no doubt have to
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: pay rent, and not a little of it, for the
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: ventilation of their caverns, and if they refused, they would
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: And in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: and as happy in their way as the upper world
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: people were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed. Naturally enough, the
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: great triumph of humanity I had dreamed of took a
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: different shape in my mind. It had been no such
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: triumph of moral education and general cooperation as I had imagined. Instead,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of today.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over nature,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: but a triumph over nature and the fellow man. This,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: I must warn you, was my theory at the time.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: think it is the most plausible one. But even on
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: this supposition, the balanced civilization that was at least attained
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: must have long since passed its zenith and was now
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: far fallen into decay. The too perfect security of the
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: upper worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence that
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: I could see clearly enough already what had happened to
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: the underworlders I did not yet suspect, but from what
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: I had seen of the Morlocks, that, by the way,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: was the name by which the creatures were called, I
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: could imagine that the modification of the human type was
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: even far more profound than among the Eloi, the beautiful
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: race that I already knew. Then came troublesome doubts. Why
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: had the Morlocks taken my time machine? For I felt
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: machine to me? And why were they so terribly afraid
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: of the dark. I proceeded, as I have said, to
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: question Weena about this underworld, But here again I was disappointed.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: At first she would not understand my questions, and presently
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: she refused to answer them. She shivered, as though the
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: topic was unendurable, and when I pressed her, perhaps a
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: little harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: tears except my own I ever saw in that golden age.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: When I saw them, I ceased abruptly to trouble about
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes, and very soon
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: she was smiling and clapping her hands while I solemnly
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: burned a match. End of Chapter five, Chapter six. It
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: may seem odd to you, but it was two days
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: before I could follow up the new fountain clue in
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the half
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: bleached color of the worms and things one sees preserved
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: in spirit in a zoological museum, and they were filthily
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: the morlocks I now began to appreciate. The next night,
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: which I could perceive no definite reason. I remember creeping
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: noiselessly into the Great Hall where the little people were
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: sleeping in the moonlight that night. Weena was among them,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: even then that in the course of a few days,
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: nights grow dark when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: from below, these whitened lemurs, this new vermin that had
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: these days I had the restless feeling of one who
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the time
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: only I had had a companion, it would have been different.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: down into the darkness of the well appalled me. I
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: don't know if you will understand my feeling, but I
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: never felt quite safe at my back. It was this restlessness,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: this insecurity, perhaps that drove me further and further afield
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: in my exploring expeditions. Going to the south northwestward towards
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: the rising country that is now called combe Wood, I observed,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: far off in the direction of nineteenth century Banstead, a
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: vast green structure, different in character from any I had
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had an
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: oriental look, the face of it having the luster as
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: well as the pale green tint, a kind of bluish
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: green of a certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: in aspect suggested a difference in use, and I was
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: minded to push on and explore. But the day was
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: growing late, and I had come upon the side of
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: the place after a long and tiring circuit. So I
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: Little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: my curiosity regarding the palace of Green porcelain was a
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: piece of self deception to enable me to shirk by
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: another day and experience I dreaded. I resolved I would
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: make the descent without further waste of time, and started
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: out in the early morning towards a well near the
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: ruins of granite and aluminium. Little Weena ran with me.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: She danced beside me to the well, but when she
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: seemed strangely disconcerted. Good Bye, Little Weena, I said, kissing her,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: and then putting her down. I began to feel over
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: the parapet for the climbing hooks rather hastily, I may
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: as well confess, for I feared my courage might leak away.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: to pull at me with her little hands. I think
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off,
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: I clung to look down at the unstable hooks to
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: which I clung. I had to clamber down a shaft
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was affected by
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well,
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: and these being adapted to the needs of a creature
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: much smaller and lighter than myself. I was speedily cramped
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: and fatigued by the descent, and not simply fatigued. One
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: of the bars bent suddenly under my weight and almost
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: swung me off into the blackness. Beneath. For a moment
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: I hung by one hand, and after that experience I
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: the sheer descent with as quick emotion as possible. Glancing upward,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: I saw the aperture a small blue disk in which
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: a star was visible, while little Weena's head showed as
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: disk above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: Weena had disappeared. I was in an agony of discomfort.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: I had some thought of trying to go up the
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: shaft again and leave the under world alone, But even
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: while I turned this over in my mind, I continued
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: to descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: coming up a foot to the right of me, a
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: slender loop hole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: found it was the aperture of a narrow, horizontal tunnel
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: in which I could lie down and rest. It was
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: not too soon my arms ached, my back was cramped,
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. I
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: do not know how long I lay. I was roused
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: the darkness, I snatched at my matches and hastily striking one,
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: I saw three stooping white creatures, similar to the one
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: before the light, living as they did in what appeared
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: to me impenetrable darkness. Their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive,
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: they reflected the light in the same way. I have
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity,
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: and they did not seem to have any fear of
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: me apart from the light. But so soon as I
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: glared at me in the strangest fashion. I tried to
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: call to them, but the language they had was apparently
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: different from that of the over world people, so that
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: the thought of flight before exploration was even then in
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: my mind. But I said to myself, you are in
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: for it now, And feeling my way along the tunnel,
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: I found the noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: walls fell away from me, and I came into a
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: large open space, and, striking another match, saw that I
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: had entered a vast, arched cavern which stretched into utter
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: darkness beyond the range of my light. The view I
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: had of it was as much as one could see
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: in the burning of a match. Necessarily, my memory is vague.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: Great shapes like big man machines rose out of the
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: dimness and cast grotesque black shadows in which dim spectral
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place by the by
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: was very stuffy and oppressive, and a faint halitus of
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: freshly shed blood was in the air. Some Way down
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: the central vista was a little table of white metal
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: laid with what seemed a meal. The morlocks, at any rate,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: were carnivorous. Even at the time, I remember wondering what
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: I saw it was all very indistinct, the heavy smell,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: the big, unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows,
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: Then the match burned down and stung my fingers, and
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: fell a wriggling red spot in the blackness. I have
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: thought since how particularly ill equipped I was such an experience.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: When I had started with the time machine, I had
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: started with the absurd assumption that the men of the
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: their appliances. I had come without arms, without medicine, without
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: anything to smoke. At times I missed tobacco frightfully, even
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: without enough matches. If only I had thought of a Kodak,
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: I could have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: a second and examined it at leisure. But as it was,
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: I stood there with only the weapons and the powers
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: that nature had endowed me with hands, feet, and teeth,
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: these and four safety matches that still remained to me.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: I was afraid to push my way in among all
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: this machinery. In the dark, and it was only with
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: of matches had run low. It had never occurred to
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: me until that moment that there was any need to
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: economize them, and I had wasted almost half the box
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: in astonishing the upper worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now,
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: as I say, I had four left, And while I
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: stood in the dark, a hand touched mine. Lank fingers
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: a peculiar, unpleasant odor. I fancied. I heard the breathing
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: of a crowd of these dreadful little beings about me.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: I felt the box of matches in my hand being
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant.
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: thinking and doing came home to me very vividly. In
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: They started away, and then I could feel them approaching
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: me again. They clutched it me more boldly, whispering odd
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: sounds to each other. I shivered violently and shouted again,
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: rather discordantly. This time they were not so seriously alarmed,
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: and they made a queer, laughing noise as they came
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: I determined to strike another match and escape under the
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket,
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: I had scarce entered this when my light was blown
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: out and in the darkness, I could hear the morlocks
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: as they hurried after me. In a moment, I was
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: light and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: scarce imagine how nauseatingly human they looked, those pale, chinless
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: faces and great, lidless, pinkish gray eyes as they stared
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: to look, I promise you. I retreated again, and when
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: my second match had ended, I struck my third it
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: had almost burned through. When I reached the opening into
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: the shaft, I laid down on the edge, for the
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and as I
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: did so, my feet were grass from behind, and I
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: was violently tugged backward. I lit my last match, and
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: it incontinently went out, But I had my hand on
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: the climbing bars now and kicking violently. I disengaged myself
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: from the clutches of the morlocks and was speedily clambering
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: at me. All but one little wretch, who followed me
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: for some way and well nigh secured my boot as
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: a trophy. That climb seemed interminable to me. With the
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: last twenty or thirty feet of it, a deadly nausea
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: felt all the sensations of falling. At last, however, I
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: got over the well mouth somehow, and staggered out of
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face.
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: others among the eloy Then for a time I was insensible.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: End of chapter six, Chapter seven. Now, indeed I seemed
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: night's anguish at the loss of the time machine, I
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape. But that
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: hope was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: little people, and by some unknown forces which I had
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: only to understand to overcome. But there was an altogether
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: new element in the sickening quality of the morlocks, a
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before I
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: had felt as a man might feel who had fallen
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: into a pit. My concern was with the pit and
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: how to get out of it. Now I felt like
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: a beast in a trap whose enemy would come upon
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: him soon. The enemy I dreaded, may surprise you. It
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had put
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: about the dark nights. It was not now such a
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: very difficult problem to guess what the coming of dark
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: nights might mean. The moon was on the wane each night,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: there was a longer interval of darkness, and now I
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: understood to some slight degree at least the reason of
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: the fear of the little upper world people for the dark.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: upper world people might once have been the favored aristocracy
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: and the Morlocks their mechanical servants, but that had long
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: since passed away. The two species that had resulted from
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: the evolution of man were sliding down towards or had
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: already arrived at an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere, beautiful futility.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: They still possessed the earth on sufferance. Since the Morlocks,
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: the day that surface intolerable, and the morlocks made their garments.
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: I inferred and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: through the survival of an old habit of service. They
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: did it as a standing horse paused with his foot,
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport, because
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: But clearly the old order was already in part reversed.
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: The nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: ages ago, thousands of generations ago. Men had thrust his
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: brother Men out of the ease and the sunshine, and
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: now that brother was coming back. Changed Already, the eloy
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: becoming reacquainted with fear. And suddenly there came into my
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: head the memory of the meat I had seen in
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: the underworld. It seemed odd, how it floated into my mind,
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: not stirred up, as it were, by the current of
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: my meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: I tried to recall the form of it. I had
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: tell what it was at the time. Still, however, helpless
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: the little peopled in the presence of their mysterious fear.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: I was differently constituted. I came out of this age
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: of ours, this ripe prime of the human race. When
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: fear does not paralyze and mystery has lost its terrors,
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: I at least would defend myself without further delay. I
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: face this strange world with some of that confidence I
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep again
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: horror to think how they must already have examined me.
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: but found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible.
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: All the buildings and trees seemed easily practical to such
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells,
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: must be. Then, the tall pinnacles of the Palace of
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: back to my memory and in the evening, taking Weena
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: hills towards the southwest. The distance I had reckoned was
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: seven or eight miles, but it must have been near eighteen.
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: I had first seen the place on a moist afternoon,
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: when distances are deceptively diminished. In addition, the heel of
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: one of my shoes was loose and a nail was
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: working through the sole. They were comfortable old shoes. I
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: wore about indoors, so that I was lame, and it
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: was already long past sunset when I came in sight
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: the sky. Weena had been hugely delighted when I began
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: to carry her, but after a while she desired me
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: to let her down, and ran along by the side
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: At least she utilized them for that purpose, and that
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: reminds me. In changing my jacket, I found the time
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: traveler paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows,
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative as
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: the hush of the evening crept over the world, and
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: we proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon. Weena grew
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: tired and wanted to return to the House of gray Stone,
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: but I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her fear.
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: You know that great pause that comes upon things before
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: the dusk, even the breeze stops in the trees. To me,
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness.
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: The sky was clear, remote and empty, save for a
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well that night,
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: the expectation took the color of my fears. In that
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: darkling calm, my senses seemed peter naturally sharpened. I fancied
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: my feet, could indeed almost see through it. The morlocks
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: on their ant hill, going hither and thither, and waiting
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: would receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: of war. And why had they taken my time machine?
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: deepened into night. The clear blue of the distance faded,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: and one star after another came out. The ground grew dim,
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: and the trees black. Ween A's fears and her fatigue
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: grew upon her. I took her in my arms and
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: talked to her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and,
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: closing her eyes tightly, pressed her face against my shoulder.
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: So we went down a long slope into a valley,
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: and there, in the dimness, I almost walked into a
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: little river. This I waited, and went up on the
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: opposite side of the valley, pasted a number of sleeping houses,
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: and by a statue a fawn or some such figure
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: minus the head. Here too were acacious. So far I
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: had seen nothing of the Morlocks. But it was yet
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: early in the night, and the darker hours before the
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 1: old moon rose were still to come from the brow
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: of the next hill, I saw a thick wood spreading
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: wide and black before me. I hesitated at this. I
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: could see no end to it, either to the right
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: or the left. Feeling tired, my feet, in particular were
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: very sore, I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder. As
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: I halted and sat down upon the turf, I could
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: no longer see the palace of green porcelain, and I
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide.
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: Under that dense tangle of branches. One would be out
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: of sight of the stars, even were there no other
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: lurking danger, A danger I did not care to let
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: my imagination loose upon. There would still be all the
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: roots to stumble over and the tree bowls to strike against.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: I was very tired too, after the excitements of the day,
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: so I decided that I would not face it, but
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: would pass the night upon the open hill. Weena, I
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: her in my jacket and sat down beside her to
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: wait for the moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted,
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: but from the black of the wood. There came now,
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: and then a stir of living things above me shone.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: The stars for the night was very clear. I felt
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: the old constellations had gone from the sky. However, that
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: slow movement, which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes,
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. The milky Way,
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: of star dust as of yore. Southward, as I judged,
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: it was a very bright red star that was new
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: to me. It was even more splendid than our own
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: green serious, and amid all these scintillating points of light,
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: one bright planet shone kindly and steadily, like the face
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: of an old friend. Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow, inevitable
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: drift of their movements out of the unknown past into
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: the unknown future. I thought of the great processional cycle
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: that the pole of the Earth describes. Only forty times
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: I had traversed, and during these few revolutions, all the activity,
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations,
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: even the mere memory of Man as I knew him,
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: things of which I went in terror. Then I thought
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: of the great fear that was between the two species,
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 1: the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: might be. Yet it was too horrible. I looked at
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and star
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: like under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought. Through
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: that long night, I held my mind off the morlocks
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: as well as I could, and whiled away the time
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: by trying to fancy. I could find signs of the
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear,
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: except for a hazy cloud or so, no doubt I
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: dozed at times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: some colorless fire, and the old moon rose thin and
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: peaked and white, and close behind and overtaking it and
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: overflowing it. The dawn came pale at first, and then
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: growing pink and warm. No morlocks had approached us, indeed,
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: I had seen none upon the hill that night, and
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: in the confidence of renewed day, it almost seemed to
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: and found my foot with the loose heel, swollen at
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: the ankle, and painful under the heel. So I sat
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: down again, took off my shoes and flung them away.
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood,
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: now green and pleasant instead of black, and forbidding we
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We soon
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: the sunlight, as though there were no such thing in
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: nature as the night. And then I thought once more
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: of the meat I had seen. I felt assured now
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: of what it was, and from the bottom of my
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the long
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: ago of human decay, the morlock's food had run short.
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: Possibly they had lived on rats and such like vermin.
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: Even now, man is far less discriminating and exclusive in
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: his food than he was, far less than any monkey.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: His prejudice against human flesh is no deep seated instinct.
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: And so these inhuman sons of my men, I tried
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all,
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: they were less human and more remote than our cannibal
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. And the
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: intelligence that would have made this state of things a
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These eloi
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: were mere fatted cattle, which the ant like morlocks preserved
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: and preyed upon, probably saw to the breeding of. And
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: there was Weena dancing at my side. Then I tried
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: me by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness.
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: Man had been content to live in ease and delight
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: upon the labors of his fellow man had taken necessity
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: time necessity had come home to him. I even tried
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: a Carlyle like scorn of this wretch aristocracy in decay.
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: But this attitude of mind was impossible. However, great their
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: intellectual degradation, the ELOI had kept too much of the
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: human form not to claim my sympathy and to make
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their fear.
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: I had at that time very vague ideas as to
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: the course I should pursue. My first was to secure
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: procure some means of fire, so that I should have
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing I
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: knew would be more efficient against these morlocks. Then I
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: of bronze under the white Sphinx. I had in mind
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: a battering ram. I had a persuasion that if I
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: before me, I should discover the time machine and escape.
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: with me to our own time, and, turning such schemes
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: over in my mind, I pursued our way towards the
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling end
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: of chapter seven, Chapter eight. I found the Palace of
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: green porcelain when we approached it about noon, deserted and
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: high upon a turfy down and looking northeastward. Before I
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary,
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: have once been. I thought, then, though I never followed
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: up the thought of what might have happened or might
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: be happening to the living things in the sea. The
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: material of the palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain,
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: and along the face of it I saw an inscription
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: in some unknown character. I thought rather foolishly that Weena
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: might help me to interpret this, but I only learned
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head.
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: She always seemed to me I fancy, more human than
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: she was, perhaps because her affection was so human Within
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: the big valves of the door, which were open and broken.
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: We found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: lit by many side windows. At the first glance I
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: shrouded in the same gray covering. Then I perceived, standing
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: strange and gaunt in the center of the hall, what
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 1: was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: creature after the fashion of the megatherium. The skull and
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: in one place where rain water had dropped through a
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away.
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: a brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side,
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: cases of our own time, but they must have been
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: air tight, to judge from the fair preservation of some
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: of their contents. Clearly we stood a the ruins of
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 1: some latter day South Kensington. Here apparently was the paleontological section,
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: and the very splendid array of fossils. It must have been,
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: though the inevitable process of decay, that had been staved
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: off for a time, and had, through the extinction of
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: bacteria and fungi, lost ninety nine hundreds of its force,
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: was nevertheless, with extreme sureness, if with extreme slowness, at
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: found traces of the little people in the shape of
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: rare fossils, broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds,
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: and the cases had in some instances been bodily removed
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: by the morlocks. As I judged, the place was very silent,
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: the thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case,
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: presently came as I stared about me, and very quietly
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: took my hand and stood beside me. And at first
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: an intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about the time machine
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: receded a little from my mind to judge from the
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: size of the place, this palace of green porcelain had
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: a great deal more in it than a gallery of paleontology,
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: possibly historical galleries. It might be even a library. To me,
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: more interesting than this spectacle of old time geology. In Decay, exploring,
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: I found another short gallery running transversely to the first.
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the side
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: of a block of sulfur set my mind running on gunpowder.
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: But I could find no saltpeter, indeed no nitrates of
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: any kind. Doubtless they had deliquest ages ago. Yet the
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: sulfur hung in my mind and set up a train
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: that gallery, though on the whole they were the best
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: I had entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: natural history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition.
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: A few shriveled and blackened vestiges of what had once
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies, and jars that had once
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants. That was
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: all I was sorry for that, because I should have
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: been glad to trace the patent readjustments by which the
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we came
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly ill lit,
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: the floor of it running downward at a slight angle
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: from the end at which I entered. At intervals, white
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: globes hung from the ceiling, many of them cracked and smashed,
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit.
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: Here I was more in my element, for rising on
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines,
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: fairly complete. You know, I have a certain weakness for mechanism,
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: and I was inclined to linger among these, the more
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: so as for the most part they had the interest
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: at what they were. For I fancied that if I
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: could solve their puzzles, I should find myself in possession
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: of powers that might be of use against the morlocks. Suddenly,
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: Weena came very close to my side, so suddenly that
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: she startled me. Had it not been for her, I
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 1: do not think I should have noticed that the floor
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: of the gallery sloped at all. Footnote. It may be,
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: of course, that the floor did not slope, but that
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: the museum was built into the side of a hill.
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: Editor The end I had come in at was quite
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: above ground, and was lit by rare slit like windows.
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 1: As you went down the length, the ground came up
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: against these windows, until at last there was a pit
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: like the area of a London house before each, and
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: the light until Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: I saw that the gallery ran down at last into
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then as I looked
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: and its surface less. Even further away towards the dimness,
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: it appeared to be broken by a number of small
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: morlocks revived. At that I felt that I was wasting
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: my time in the academic examination of machinery. I called
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon,
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: no means of making a fire. And then down in
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: the remote blackness of the gallery, I heard a peculiar
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: pattering and the same odd noises I had heard down
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: the well. I took Weena's hand, then struck with a
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: from which projected a lever not unlike those in a
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: signal box. Clambering up the stand and grasping this lever
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: in my hands, I put all my weight upon its sideways. Suddenly, Weena,
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 1: deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: snapped after a minute's strain, and I rejoined her with
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: a mace in my hand, more than sufficient, I judged
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: for any morlock's skull I might encounter. And I longed
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: very much to kill a morlock, or so very inhuman
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: you may think to want to go killing one's own descendants.
• 2:36:26
  Speaker 1: But it was impossible, somehow to feel any humanity in
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: the things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena and a
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder,
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: my time machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: down the gallery and killing the brutes. I heard, well,
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 1: mace in one hand and Weena in the other. I
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: went out of that gallery and into another and still
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: larger one, which, at the first glance reminded me of
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 1: a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: charred rags that hung from the sides of it I
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: had left them. But here and there were warped boards
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough.
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: Had I been a literary man, I might perhaps have
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was,
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: the thing that struck me with the keenest force was
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: the enormous waste of labor to which this somber wilderness
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: of rotting paper testified at the time, I will confess
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: that I thought chiefly of the philosophical transactions and my
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: own seventeen papers upon physical optics. Then, going up a
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: broad staircase, we came to what may once have been
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: a little hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end,
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved.
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: I went eagerly to every unbroken case, and at last,
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: in one of the really air tight cases, I found
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: were perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: to Weena dance. I cried to her in her own tongue.
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: For now I had a weapon, indeed, against the horrible
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge delight,
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling the
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: land of the leal as cheerfully as I could. In
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: part it was a modest can can, in part a
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 1: step dance, in part a skirt dance. So far as
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 1: my tail coat permitted and in part original, for I
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: am naturally inventive, as you know now, I still think
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: that for this box of matches to have escaped the
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: wear of time for immemorial years was most strange. As
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet oddly
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: enough I found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor.
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: I found it in a sealed jar that, by chance,
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: I suppose had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 1: first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly,
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: But the odor of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay,
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a Sepia painting
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: I had once seen, done from the ink of a
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: fossil bellumnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: of years ago. I was about to throw it away,
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: but I remembered that it was in floes ammable and
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 1: burned with a good bright flame, was in fact an
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 1: excellent candle, and I put it in my pocket. I
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless, I left
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: that gallery greatly elated. I cannot tell you all the
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: story of that long afternoon. It would require a great
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 1: stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 1: and a hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, however,
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 1: and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze gates.
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles, and most
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: were masses of rust. But many were of some new metal,
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: I saw was charred and shattered, perhaps, I thought, by
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: an explosion. Among the specimens. In another place was a
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: vast array of idols, Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: on Earth, I should think, And here, yielding to an
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: a stea tight monster from South America that particularly took
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: my fancy As the evening drew on my interest waned
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 1: I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous,
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: the exhibit sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher.
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: In one place I suddenly found myself near the model
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: of a tin mine, and then, by the merest accident,
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: I discovered in an air tight case two dynamite cartridges.
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: I shouted, eureka, had smashed the case with joy. Then
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery,
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: as I did in waiting five ten, fifteen minutes for
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: an explosion that never came. Of course, the things were dummies,
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: as I might have guessed from their presence. I really
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: believed that had they not been so, I should have
• 2:42:34
  Speaker 1: rushed off incontinently and blown sphinx bronze doors, and as
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: it proved my chances of finding the time machine all
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: together into non existence. It was after that I think
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: that we came to a little open court within the palace.
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: It was turfed and had three fruit trees. So we
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset, I began to sitter
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: hiding place had still to be found, But that troubled
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: me very little. Now I had in my possession a
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: thing that was perhaps the best of all defenses against
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: the morlocks. I had matches. I had the camphor in
• 2:43:20
  Speaker 1: my pocket too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 1: to me that the best thing we could do would
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: be to pass the night in the open, protected by
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: a fire. In the morning there was the getting of
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: the time machine. Towards that. As yet I had only
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: my iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 1: I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: as being very strong, and I hoped to find my
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 1: bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work. End
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 1: of chapter eight, Chapter nine, we emerged from the palace
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: while the sun was still in part above the horizon.
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: next morning, and ere the dusk I proposed pushing through
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 1: the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey.
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 1: My plan was to go as far as possible that night,
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: and then building a fire to sleep in the protection
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 1: of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along, I gathered
• 2:44:32
  Speaker 1: any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 1: my arms full of such litter thus loaded. Our progress
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: was slower than I had anticipated, And besides, Weena was tired,
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: and I began to suffer from sleepiness too, so that
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: it was full night before we reached the wood upon
• 2:44:54
  Speaker 1: the shrubby hill of its edge. Weena would have stopped
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 1: fearing the darkness before us, but a singular sense of
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 1: impending calamity that should indeed have served me as a warning,
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: drove me onward. I had been without sleep for a
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable.
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: I felt sleep coming upon me, and the morlocks with it.
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: While we hesitated among the black bushes behind us, and
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: was scrub and long grass all about us, and I
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The forest,
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: I calculated, was rather less than a mile across if
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: we could get through it to the bare hill side. There,
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting place.
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: I thought that with my matches and my camphor, I
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods.
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: matches with my hands, I should have to in my firewood.
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: So rather reluctantly I put it down. And then it
• 2:46:06
  Speaker 1: came into my head that I would amaze our friends
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: as an ingenious move for covering our retreat. I don't
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: know if you have ever thought what a rare thing
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: flame must be in the absence of man, and in
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: a temperate climate, the sun's heat is rarely strong enough
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 1: to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire.
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 1: Decaying vegetation may occasionally smolder with the heat of its fermentation,
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 1: but this rarely results in flame. In this decadence, too,
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: the art of fire making had been forgotten on the earth.
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 1: The red tongues that went licking up my heap of
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 1: wood were an altar together, new and strange thing to Weena.
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 1: She wanted to run to it and play with it.
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 1: I believe she would have cast herself into it had
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 1: the wood for a little way. The glare of my
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could see
• 2:47:24
  Speaker 1: through the crowded stems that from my heap of sticks,
• 2:47:27
  Speaker 1: the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again to
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 1: the dark trees before me. It was very black, and
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 1: Weena clung to me convulsively, But there was still, as
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 1: my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for
• 2:47:47
  Speaker 1: me to avoid the stems. Overhead, it was simply black,
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 1: except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: upon us. Here and there I struck none of my matches.
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 1: Because I had no hand free upon my left arm,
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: I carried my little one in my right hand. I
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: had my iron bar for some way. I heard nothing
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: but the crackling twigs under my feet. The faint rustle
• 2:48:13
  Speaker 1: of the breeze above, and my own breathing, and the
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: throb of the blood vessels in my ears. Then I
• 2:48:20
  Speaker 1: seemed to know of a pattering about me. I pushed
• 2:48:23
  Speaker 1: on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 1: caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard
• 2:48:30
  Speaker 1: in the underworld. There were evidently several of the Morlocks,
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another minute,
• 2:48:39
  Speaker 1: I felt a tug at my coat, then something at
• 2:48:43
  Speaker 1: my arm, and Weena shivered violently and became quite still.
• 2:48:48
  Speaker 1: It was time for a match, but to get one
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 1: I must put her down. I did so, and as
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 1: I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part, and
• 2:49:02
  Speaker 1: with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 1: little hands too, were creeping over my coat and back,
• 2:49:10
  Speaker 1: touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and fizzed.
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 1: I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of
• 2:49:18
  Speaker 1: the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I hastily took
• 2:49:22
  Speaker 1: a lump of camphor from my pocket and prepared to
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: light it as soon as the match should wane. Then
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 1: I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet
• 2:49:31
  Speaker 1: and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 1: a sudden fright, I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung
• 2:49:43
  Speaker 1: it to the ground, And as it split and flared
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 1: up and drove back the morlocks and the shadows, I
• 2:49:49
  Speaker 1: knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: of the stir and murmur of a great company. She
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my
• 2:50:01
  Speaker 1: shoulder and rose to push on. And then there came
• 2:50:05
  Speaker 1: a horrible realization. In maneuvering with my matches and Weena,
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 1: I had turned myself about several times, and now I
• 2:50:14
  Speaker 1: had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path.
• 2:50:18
  Speaker 1: For all I knew I might be facing back towards
• 2:50:21
  Speaker 1: the palace of green Porcelain. I found myself in a
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 1: cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do.
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 1: I determined to build a fire, and in camp where
• 2:50:32
  Speaker 1: we were, I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a
• 2:50:37
  Speaker 1: turfy bowl, and very hastily as my first lump of
• 2:50:40
  Speaker 1: camphor waned. I began collecting sticks and leaves here and there.
• 2:50:45
  Speaker 1: Out of the darkness round me. The morlock's eyes shone
• 2:50:49
  Speaker 1: like carbuncles. The camphor flickered and went out. I lit
• 2:50:54
  Speaker 1: a match, and as I did so, two white forms
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 1: that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 1: so blinded by the light that he came straight for me,
• 2:51:05
  Speaker 1: and I felt his bones grind under the blow of
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 1: my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a
• 2:51:11
  Speaker 1: little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 1: camphor and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed
• 2:51:19
  Speaker 1: how dry was some of the foliage above me. For
• 2:51:22
  Speaker 1: since my arrival on the time Machine a matter of
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 1: a week, no rain had fallen. So instead of casting
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 1: about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping
• 2:51:33
  Speaker 1: up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking,
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could
• 2:51:41
  Speaker 1: economize my camphor. Then I turned to where Lena lay
• 2:51:45
  Speaker 1: beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 1: revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could
• 2:51:52
  Speaker 1: not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed. Now,
• 2:51:57
  Speaker 1: the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and
• 2:52:00
  Speaker 1: it must have made me heavy of a sudden Moreover,
• 2:52:03
  Speaker 1: the vapor of camphor was in the air. My fire
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 1: would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 1: felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too,
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 1: was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand.
• 2:52:19
  Speaker 1: I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But
• 2:52:23
  Speaker 1: all was dark, and the morlocks had their hands upon me,
• 2:52:27
  Speaker 1: flinging off their clinging fingers. I hastily felt in my
• 2:52:31
  Speaker 1: pocket for the match box, and it had gone. Then
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 1: they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 1: I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my
• 2:52:42
  Speaker 1: fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came
• 2:52:45
  Speaker 1: over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell
• 2:52:50
  Speaker 1: of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by
• 2:52:53
  Speaker 1: the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was
• 2:52:57
  Speaker 1: indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all those soft
• 2:53:01
  Speaker 1: creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: in a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered and went down.
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over,
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: and as I did so, my hand came against my
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 1: iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up, shaking
• 2:53:20
  Speaker 1: the human rats from me and holding the bar short.
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 1: I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I
• 2:53:27
  Speaker 1: could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 1: my blows, and for a moment I was free. The
• 2:53:34
  Speaker 1: strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting
• 2:53:38
  Speaker 1: came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena
• 2:53:41
  Speaker 1: were lost, but I determined to make the morlots pay
• 2:53:44
  Speaker 1: for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree,
• 2:53:48
  Speaker 1: swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was
• 2:53:51
  Speaker 1: full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed,
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 1: their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement,
• 2:53:59
  Speaker 1: and their movements grew faster, yet none came within reach.
• 2:54:04
  Speaker 1: I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope.
• 2:54:09
  Speaker 1: What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the
• 2:54:13
  Speaker 1: heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness seemed
• 2:54:17
  Speaker 1: to grow luminous, very dimly. I began to see the
• 2:54:21
  Speaker 1: Morlocks about me, three battered at my feet, and then
• 2:54:24
  Speaker 1: I recognized with incredulous surprise that the others were running
• 2:54:29
  Speaker 1: in an incessant stream, as it seemed from behind me
• 2:54:32
  Speaker 1: and away through the wood in front, and their backs
• 2:54:36
  Speaker 1: seemed no longer white but reddish. As I stood agape,
• 2:54:40
  Speaker 1: I saw a little red spark go drifting across a
• 2:54:43
  Speaker 1: gap of starlight between the branches and vanish and at
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 1: that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous
• 2:54:52
  Speaker 1: murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the
• 2:54:55
  Speaker 1: red glow, and the morlock's flight hopping out from behind
• 2:55:00
  Speaker 1: my tree, And looking back, I saw through the black
• 2:55:03
  Speaker 1: pillars of the nearer trees the flames of the burning forest.
• 2:55:08
  Speaker 1: It was my first fire coming after me. With that,
• 2:55:12
  Speaker 1: I looked for Weena, but she was gone. The hissing
• 2:55:16
  Speaker 1: and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh
• 2:55:20
  Speaker 1: tree burst into flame left little time for reflection. My
• 2:55:24
  Speaker 1: iron bar still gripped, I followed in the morlock's path.
• 2:55:28
  Speaker 1: It was a close race. Once the flames crept forward
• 2:55:32
  Speaker 1: so swiftly on my right as I ran that I
• 2:55:34
  Speaker 1: was out flanked and had to strike off to the left.
• 2:55:38
  Speaker 1: But at last I emerged upon a small open space,
• 2:55:42
  Speaker 1: and as I did so, a morlock came blundering towards me,
• 2:55:46
  Speaker 1: and passed me, and went on straight into the fire.
• 2:55:50
  Speaker 1: And now I was able to see the most weird
• 2:55:53
  Speaker 1: and horrible thing I think of all that I beheld
• 2:55:56
  Speaker 1: in that future age. This whole space was as bright
• 2:56:00
  Speaker 1: as day with the reflection of the fire. In the
• 2:56:03
  Speaker 1: center was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn.
• 2:56:09
  Speaker 1: Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with
• 2:56:12
  Speaker 1: yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space
• 2:56:16
  Speaker 1: with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside were some
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 1: thirty or forty morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat,
• 2:56:24
  Speaker 1: and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment.
• 2:56:29
  Speaker 1: At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck
• 2:56:32
  Speaker 1: furiously at them with my bar in a frenzy of
• 2:56:35
  Speaker 1: fear as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more.
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 1: But when I had watched the gestures of one of
• 2:56:43
  Speaker 1: them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and
• 2:56:47
  Speaker 1: heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness
• 2:56:52
  Speaker 1: and misery in the glare, and I struck no more
• 2:56:55
  Speaker 1: of them. Yet every now and then one would come
• 2:56:59
  Speaker 1: straight toward towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that
• 2:57:03
  Speaker 1: made ME quick to elude him. At one time, the
• 2:57:06
  Speaker 1: flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures
• 2:57:09
  Speaker 1: would presently be able to see me. I was thinking
• 2:57:13
  Speaker 1: of beginning the fight by killing some of them before
• 2:57:16
  Speaker 1: this should happen. But the fire burst out again brightly,
• 2:57:19
  Speaker 1: and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill
• 2:57:22
  Speaker 1: among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena.
• 2:57:27
  Speaker 1: But Weena was gone. At last, I sat down on
• 2:57:31
  Speaker 1: the summit of the hillock and watched this strange, incredible
• 2:57:34
  Speaker 1: company of blind things, groping to and fro and making
• 2:57:38
  Speaker 1: uncanny noises to each other as the glare of the
• 2:57:41
  Speaker 1: fire beat on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed
• 2:57:45
  Speaker 1: across the sky and through the rare tatters of that
• 2:57:48
  Speaker 1: red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe
• 2:57:53
  Speaker 1: shown the little stars. Two or three morlocks came blundering
• 2:57:57
  Speaker 1: into me, and I drove them off with blows of
• 2:57:59
  Speaker 1: my fists trembling. As I did so for the most
• 2:58:04
  Speaker 1: part of that night, I was persuaded it was a nightmare.
• 2:58:08
  Speaker 1: I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake.
• 2:58:12
  Speaker 1: I beat the ground with my hands, and got up,
• 2:58:15
  Speaker 1: and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and
• 2:58:18
  Speaker 1: again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my
• 2:58:22
  Speaker 1: eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice
• 2:58:25
  Speaker 1: I saw morlocks put their heads down in a kind
• 2:58:28
  Speaker 1: of agony, and rush into the flames. But at last,
• 2:58:32
  Speaker 1: above the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming
• 2:58:36
  Speaker 1: masses of black smoke, and the whitening and blackening tree stumps,
• 2:58:40
  Speaker 1: and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the
• 2:58:43
  Speaker 1: white light of the day. I searched again for traces
• 2:58:49
  Speaker 1: of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that
• 2:58:53
  Speaker 1: they had left her poor little body in the forest.
• 2:58:57
  Speaker 1: I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that
• 2:59:01
  Speaker 1: it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined.
• 2:59:06
  Speaker 1: As I thought of that, I was almost moved to
• 2:59:08
  Speaker 1: begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me. But
• 2:59:12
  Speaker 1: I contained myself the hillock as I have said was
• 2:59:16
  Speaker 1: a kind of island in the forest. From its summit
• 2:59:20
  Speaker 1: I could now make out, through a haze of smoke,
• 2:59:22
  Speaker 1: the palace of green porcelain, and from that I could
• 2:59:25
  Speaker 1: get my bearings for the white Sphinx, and so leaving
• 2:59:30
  Speaker 1: the remnant of these damned souls, still going hither and
• 2:59:34
  Speaker 1: thither and moaning. As the day grew clearer, I tied
• 2:59:37
  Speaker 1: some grass about my feet and limped on across smoking
• 2:59:40
  Speaker 1: ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with fire,
• 2:59:46
  Speaker 1: towards the hiding place of the time machine. I walked slowly,
• 2:59:51
  Speaker 1: for I was almost exhausted as well as lame, and
• 2:59:55
  Speaker 1: I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of
• 2:59:59
  Speaker 1: little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now in this old,
• 3:00:04
  Speaker 1: familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a
• 3:00:07
  Speaker 1: dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left
• 3:00:11
  Speaker 1: me absolutely lonely again, terribly alone. I began to think
• 3:00:16
  Speaker 1: of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some
• 3:00:19
  Speaker 1: of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that
• 3:00:23
  Speaker 1: was pain. But as I walked over the smoking ashes
• 3:00:28
  Speaker 1: under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery in
• 3:00:32
  Speaker 1: my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. The box
• 3:00:36
  Speaker 1: must have leaked before it was lost. End of Chapter nine,
• 3:00:43
  Speaker 1: Chapter ten. About eight or nine in the morning, I
• 3:00:48
  Speaker 1: came to the same seat of yellow metal from which
• 3:00:51
  Speaker 1: I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival.
• 3:00:55
  Speaker 1: I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening, and
• 3:00:58
  Speaker 1: could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here
• 3:01:02
  Speaker 1: was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the
• 3:01:07
  Speaker 1: same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river
• 3:01:12
  Speaker 1: running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of the
• 3:01:16
  Speaker 1: beautiful people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some
• 3:01:20
  Speaker 1: were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena,
• 3:01:24
  Speaker 1: and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain.
• 3:01:28
  Speaker 1: And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupulas above
• 3:01:32
  Speaker 1: the ways to the underworld. I understood now what all
• 3:01:36
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the over world people covered? Very pleasant?
• 3:01:40
  Speaker 1: Was their day as pleasant as the day of the
• 3:01:43
  Speaker 1: cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of
• 3:01:47
  Speaker 1: no enemies and provided against no needs, And their end
• 3:01:52
  Speaker 1: was the same. I grieved to think how brief the
• 3:01:56
  Speaker 1: dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suoneicide.
• 3:02:00
  Speaker 1: It had set itself steadfastly towards comforts and ease, a
• 3:02:05
  Speaker 1: balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword. It
• 3:02:10
  Speaker 1: had attained its hopes, and come to this at last,
• 3:02:15
  Speaker 1: once life and property must have reached almost absolute safety.
• 3:02:21
  Speaker 1: The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort,
• 3:02:24
  Speaker 1: the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt,
• 3:02:29
  Speaker 1: in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem,
• 3:02:33
  Speaker 1: no social question left unsolved, and a great quiet had followed.
• 3:02:40
  Speaker 1: It is a law of nature we overlook that intellectual
• 3:02:43
  Speaker 1: versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An
• 3:02:49
  Speaker 1: animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism.
• 3:02:54
  Speaker 1: Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.
• 3:03:00
  Speaker 1: There is no intelligence where there is no change and
• 3:03:03
  Speaker 1: no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence
• 3:03:07
  Speaker 1: that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers. So,
• 3:03:13
  Speaker 1: as I see it, the upper world man had drifted
• 3:03:15
  Speaker 1: towards his feeble prettiness, and the underworld to mere mechanical industry.
• 3:03:22
  Speaker 1: But that perfect state had lacked one thing, even for
• 3:03:25
  Speaker 1: mechanical perfection, absolute permanency. Apparently, as time went on, the
• 3:03:32
  Speaker 1: feeding of the underworld, however it was affected, had become disjointed.
• 3:03:38
  Speaker 1: Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few
• 3:03:41
  Speaker 1: thousand years, came back again, and she began below the underworld,
• 3:03:47
  Speaker 1: being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect still needs
• 3:03:51
  Speaker 1: some little thought. Outside habit had probably retained perforce rather
• 3:03:56
  Speaker 1: more initiative, if less of every other human character than
• 3:04:00
  Speaker 1: the upper And when other meat failed them, they turned
• 3:04:04
  Speaker 1: to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say
• 3:04:09
  Speaker 1: I saw it in my last view of the world
• 3:04:11
  Speaker 1: of eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one.
• 3:04:15
  Speaker 1: It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit
• 3:04:18
  Speaker 1: could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me,
• 3:04:22
  Speaker 1: and as that I give it to you. After the fatigues, excitements,
• 3:04:28
  Speaker 1: and terrors of the past days, and in spite of
• 3:04:31
  Speaker 1: my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the
• 3:04:34
  Speaker 1: warm sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy,
• 3:04:40
  Speaker 1: and soon my theorizing passed into dozing. Catching myself at that,
• 3:04:45
  Speaker 1: I took my own hint and spreading myself out upon
• 3:04:48
  Speaker 1: the turf. I had a long and refreshing sleep. I
• 3:04:53
  Speaker 1: awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against
• 3:04:57
  Speaker 1: being caught napping by the Morlocks, and stretching myself, I
• 3:05:01
  Speaker 1: came down on the hill towards the White Sphinx. I
• 3:05:05
  Speaker 1: had my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand
• 3:05:07
  Speaker 1: played with the matches in my pocket. And now came
• 3:05:12
  Speaker 1: a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of
• 3:05:16
  Speaker 1: the Sphinx, I found the bronze valves were open. They
• 3:05:20
  Speaker 1: had slid down into grooves. At that I stopped short
• 3:05:24
  Speaker 1: before them, hesitating to enter. Within was a small apartment,
• 3:05:30
  Speaker 1: and on a raised place in the corner of this
• 3:05:32
  Speaker 1: was the time machine. I had the small levers in
• 3:05:36
  Speaker 1: my pocket, so here, after all my elaborate preparations for
• 3:05:40
  Speaker 1: the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek surrender.
• 3:05:45
  Speaker 1: I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to
• 3:05:48
  Speaker 1: use it. A sudden thought came into my head as
• 3:05:52
  Speaker 1: I stooped towards the portal. For once at least I
• 3:05:56
  Speaker 1: grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks. Pressing a strong
• 3:06:01
  Speaker 1: inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze frame and
• 3:06:04
  Speaker 1: up to the time machine. I was surprised to find
• 3:06:08
  Speaker 1: it had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected
• 3:06:12
  Speaker 1: since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it to
• 3:06:15
  Speaker 1: pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose. Now,
• 3:06:21
  Speaker 1: as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in
• 3:06:24
  Speaker 1: the mere touch of the contrivance, the thing I had
• 3:06:27
  Speaker 1: expected happened. The bronze panel suddenly slid up and struck
• 3:06:32
  Speaker 1: the frame with a clang. I was in the dark, trapped,
• 3:06:37
  Speaker 1: so the morlocks thought, And at that I chuckled gleefully.
• 3:06:42
  Speaker 1: I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came
• 3:06:45
  Speaker 1: towards me. Very calmly, I tried to strike the match.
• 3:06:51
  Speaker 1: I had only to fix on the levers and depart
• 3:06:53
  Speaker 1: then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little thing,
• 3:06:59
  Speaker 1: the matches of that abominable kind, that light only on
• 3:07:03
  Speaker 1: the box. You may imagine how all my calm vanished.
• 3:07:08
  Speaker 1: The little brutes were close upon me. One touched me.
• 3:07:12
  Speaker 1: I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them
• 3:07:14
  Speaker 1: with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle
• 3:07:17
  Speaker 1: of the machine. Then came one hand upon me and
• 3:07:21
  Speaker 1: then another. Then I had simply to fight against their
• 3:07:25
  Speaker 1: persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time
• 3:07:29
  Speaker 1: few for the studs over which these fitted. One Indeed,
• 3:07:33
  Speaker 1: they almost got away from me as it slipped from
• 3:07:36
  Speaker 1: my hand. I had to bud in the dark with
• 3:07:38
  Speaker 1: my head. I could hear the morlock's skull ring to
• 3:07:41
  Speaker 1: recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight
• 3:07:45
  Speaker 1: in the forest, I think, this last scramble. But at
• 3:07:49
  Speaker 1: last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging
• 3:07:53
  Speaker 1: hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes.
• 3:07:58
  Speaker 1: I found myself in the same gray lights and tumult
• 3:08:02
  Speaker 1: I have already described end of chapter ten, Chapter eleven.
• 3:08:11
  Speaker 1: I have already told you of this sickness and confusion
• 3:08:14
  Speaker 1: that comes with time traveling. And this time I was
• 3:08:18
  Speaker 1: not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in
• 3:08:22
  Speaker 1: an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time. I clung to
• 3:08:27
  Speaker 1: the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how
• 3:08:31
  Speaker 1: I went. And when I brought myself to look at
• 3:08:33
  Speaker 1: the dials again, I was amazed to find where I
• 3:08:36
  Speaker 1: had arrived. One dial records days and another thousands of days,
• 3:08:42
  Speaker 1: another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now,
• 3:08:47
  Speaker 1: instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over
• 3:08:51
  Speaker 1: so as to go forward with them. And when I
• 3:08:53
  Speaker 1: came to look at these indicators, I found that the
• 3:08:56
  Speaker 1: thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the second's
• 3:08:59
  Speaker 1: hand of a watch into futurity. As I drove on,
• 3:09:04
  Speaker 1: a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The
• 3:09:08
  Speaker 1: palpitating grayness grew darker. Then, though I was still traveling
• 3:09:12
  Speaker 1: with prodigious velocity, the blinking succession of day and night,
• 3:09:17
  Speaker 1: which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned and
• 3:09:21
  Speaker 1: more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first.
• 3:09:26
  Speaker 1: The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower,
• 3:09:30
  Speaker 1: and so did the passage of the sun across the sky,
• 3:09:34
  Speaker 1: until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last, a
• 3:09:38
  Speaker 1: steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken
• 3:09:43
  Speaker 1: now and then, when a comet glared across the darkling sky,
• 3:09:47
  Speaker 1: the band of light that had indicated the sun had
• 3:09:50
  Speaker 1: long since disappeared, for the sun had ceased to set.
• 3:09:55
  Speaker 1: It simply rose and fell in the west, and grew
• 3:09:58
  Speaker 1: ever broader and more all trace of the moon had vanished.
• 3:10:04
  Speaker 1: The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had
• 3:10:08
  Speaker 1: given place to creeping points of light. At last, some
• 3:10:13
  Speaker 1: time before I stopped, the Sun, very red and very large,
• 3:10:18
  Speaker 1: halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome, glowing with
• 3:10:23
  Speaker 1: a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction.
• 3:10:29
  Speaker 1: At one time it had, for a little while glowed
• 3:10:32
  Speaker 1: more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen
• 3:10:37
  Speaker 1: red heat. I perceived, by this slowing down of its
• 3:10:41
  Speaker 1: rising and setting, that the work of the tidal drag
• 3:10:44
  Speaker 1: was done. The Earth had come to rest with one
• 3:10:47
  Speaker 1: face to the Sun, even as in our own time,
• 3:10:51
  Speaker 1: the Moon faces the Earth very cautiously. For I remembered
• 3:10:56
  Speaker 1: my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion.
• 3:11:01
  Speaker 1: Slower and slower went the circling hands, until the thousands
• 3:11:05
  Speaker 1: one seemed motionless, and the daily one was no longer
• 3:11:09
  Speaker 1: a mere mist upon its scale, still slower, until the
• 3:11:13
  Speaker 1: dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible. I stopped
• 3:11:18
  Speaker 1: very gently and sat upon the time machine, looking round.
• 3:11:23
  Speaker 1: The sky was no longer blue. Northeastward it was inky black,
• 3:11:28
  Speaker 1: and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the
• 3:11:32
  Speaker 1: pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red
• 3:11:37
  Speaker 1: and starless, and southeastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet,
• 3:11:42
  Speaker 1: where cut by the horizon lay the huge hull of
• 3:11:45
  Speaker 1: the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were
• 3:11:50
  Speaker 1: of a harsh reddish color. And all the trace of
• 3:11:54
  Speaker 1: life that I could see at first was the intensely
• 3:11:56
  Speaker 1: green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their southeastern face.
• 3:12:03
  Speaker 1: It was the same rich green that one sees on
• 3:12:06
  Speaker 1: forest moss or on the lichen in caves, plants which
• 3:12:11
  Speaker 1: like these grow in a perpetual twilight. The machine was
• 3:12:16
  Speaker 1: standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to
• 3:12:20
  Speaker 1: the southwest to rise into a sharp, bright horizon against
• 3:12:24
  Speaker 1: the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves,
• 3:12:29
  Speaker 1: for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a
• 3:12:32
  Speaker 1: slightly oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing,
• 3:12:37
  Speaker 1: and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living.
• 3:12:42
  Speaker 1: And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was
• 3:12:45
  Speaker 1: a thick incrustation of salt pink. Under the lurid sky,
• 3:12:51
  Speaker 1: there was a sense of oppression in my head, and
• 3:12:53
  Speaker 1: I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation
• 3:12:58
  Speaker 1: reminded me of my only ex experience of mountaineering, and
• 3:13:02
  Speaker 1: from that I judged the air to be more rarefied
• 3:13:05
  Speaker 1: than it is now. Far away up the desolate slope,
• 3:13:09
  Speaker 1: I heard a harsh scream and saw a thing like
• 3:13:12
  Speaker 1: a huge white butterfly go slanting and flittering up into
• 3:13:16
  Speaker 1: the sky and circling disappear over some low hillocks beyond.
• 3:13:22
  Speaker 1: The sound of its voice was so dismal that I
• 3:13:25
  Speaker 1: shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking
• 3:13:30
  Speaker 1: round me again, I saw that quite near what I
• 3:13:33
  Speaker 1: had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was
• 3:13:36
  Speaker 1: moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was
• 3:13:40
  Speaker 1: really a monstrous crablike creature. Can you imagine a crab
• 3:13:46
  Speaker 1: as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving
• 3:13:49
  Speaker 1: slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae
• 3:13:55
  Speaker 1: like Carter's whips waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes
• 3:13:59
  Speaker 1: gleaming at you at either side of its metallic front.
• 3:14:03
  Speaker 1: Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses and
• 3:14:07
  Speaker 1: a greenish incrustation blotched it. Here and there. I could
• 3:14:11
  Speaker 1: see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and
• 3:14:14
  Speaker 1: feeling as it moved. As I stared at this sinister
• 3:14:20
  Speaker 1: apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek,
• 3:14:25
  Speaker 1: as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
• 3:14:28
  Speaker 1: brush it away with my hand, but in a moment
• 3:14:31
  Speaker 1: it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear.
• 3:14:36
  Speaker 1: I struck at this and caught something threadlike. It was
• 3:14:40
  Speaker 1: drawn swiftly out of my hand with a frightful qualm.
• 3:14:44
  Speaker 1: I turned and saw that I had grasped the antennae
• 3:14:47
  Speaker 1: of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its
• 3:14:51
  Speaker 1: evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was
• 3:14:55
  Speaker 1: all alive with appetite, and its vast, ungainly claws, smeared
• 3:15:00
  Speaker 1: with an algeal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment,
• 3:15:04
  Speaker 1: my hand was on the lever, and I had placed
• 3:15:07
  Speaker 1: a month between myself and these monsters. But I was
• 3:15:11
  Speaker 1: still on the same beach and saw them distinctly. Now,
• 3:15:15
  Speaker 1: as soon as I stopped, dozens of them seemed to
• 3:15:18
  Speaker 1: be crawling here and there in the somber light, among
• 3:15:21
  Speaker 1: the foliated sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the
• 3:15:26
  Speaker 1: sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The
• 3:15:31
  Speaker 1: red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt dead sea,
• 3:15:36
  Speaker 1: the stony beach, crawling with these foul, slow, stirring monsters,
• 3:15:42
  Speaker 1: the uniform, poisonous looking green of the likeness plants, the
• 3:15:46
  Speaker 1: thin air that hurts one's lungs, all contributed to an
• 3:15:50
  Speaker 1: appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there
• 3:15:56
  Speaker 1: was the same red sun, a little larger, a little duller,
• 3:16:00
  Speaker 1: the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the
• 3:16:04
  Speaker 1: same crowd of earthy crestacea creeping in and out among
• 3:16:08
  Speaker 1: the green weed and the red rocks. And in the
• 3:16:11
  Speaker 1: westward sky I saw a curved pale line like a
• 3:16:15
  Speaker 1: vast new moon. So I traveled, stopping ever and again
• 3:16:21
  Speaker 1: in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn
• 3:16:24
  Speaker 1: on by the mystery of the Earth's fate, watching with
• 3:16:27
  Speaker 1: a strange fascination, the sun grow larger and duller in
• 3:16:31
  Speaker 1: the westward sky, and the life of the old Earth
• 3:16:35
  Speaker 1: ebb away at last more than thirty million years hence
• 3:16:40
  Speaker 1: the huge red hot dome of the sun had come
• 3:16:43
  Speaker 1: to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkening heavens.
• 3:16:47
  Speaker 1: Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of
• 3:16:50
  Speaker 1: crabs had disappeared, and the red beech, save for its
• 3:16:55
  Speaker 1: livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless, and now it
• 3:17:00
  Speaker 1: was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me rare
• 3:17:05
  Speaker 1: white flakes. Ever, and again came eddying down to the northeastward.
• 3:17:10
  Speaker 1: The glare of snow lay under the starlight of the
• 3:17:12
  Speaker 1: sable sky, and I could see an undulating crest of
• 3:17:16
  Speaker 1: hellocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice among the
• 3:17:20
  Speaker 1: sea margin, with drifting masses further out, but the main
• 3:17:24
  Speaker 1: expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset,
• 3:17:29
  Speaker 1: was still unfrozen. I looked about me to see if
• 3:17:34
  Speaker 1: any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension
• 3:17:39
  Speaker 1: still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But
• 3:17:43
  Speaker 1: I saw nothing moving in earth or sky or sea.
• 3:17:48
  Speaker 1: The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life
• 3:17:52
  Speaker 1: was not extinct. A shallow sand bank that appeared in
• 3:17:57
  Speaker 1: the sea, and the water had receded from the beach.
• 3:18:00
  Speaker 1: I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon
• 3:18:04
  Speaker 1: this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it,
• 3:18:08
  Speaker 1: and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and
• 3:18:12
  Speaker 1: that the black object was merely a rock. The stars
• 3:18:16
  Speaker 1: in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me
• 3:18:19
  Speaker 1: to twinkle very little. Suddenly I noticed that the circular
• 3:18:24
  Speaker 1: westward outline of the Sun had changed, that a concavity
• 3:18:29
  Speaker 1: a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this
• 3:18:33
  Speaker 1: grow larger for a minute, perhaps I stared aghast at
• 3:18:37
  Speaker 1: this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then
• 3:18:41
  Speaker 1: I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the Moon
• 3:18:45
  Speaker 1: or the planet Mercury was passing across the Sun's disk naturally.
• 3:18:51
  Speaker 1: At first I took it to be the Moon, but
• 3:18:54
  Speaker 1: there is much to incline me to believe that what
• 3:18:56
  Speaker 1: I really saw was the transit of an inner planet
• 3:19:00
  Speaker 1: passing very near to the Earth. The darkness grew apace,
• 3:19:05
  Speaker 1: A cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from
• 3:19:08
  Speaker 1: the east, and the showering white flakes in the air
• 3:19:11
  Speaker 1: increased in number. From the edge of the sea came
• 3:19:15
  Speaker 1: a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds, the world
• 3:19:20
  Speaker 1: was silent, silent. It would be hard to convey the
• 3:19:24
  Speaker 1: stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating
• 3:19:28
  Speaker 1: of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,
• 3:19:32
  Speaker 1: the stir that makes the background of our lives. All
• 3:19:36
  Speaker 1: that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes
• 3:19:40
  Speaker 1: grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes, and the cold
• 3:19:45
  Speaker 1: of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly,
• 3:19:51
  Speaker 1: one after the other, the white peaks of the distant
• 3:19:53
  Speaker 1: hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind.
• 3:19:59
  Speaker 1: I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping
• 3:20:02
  Speaker 1: towards me. In another moment, the pale stars alone were visible.
• 3:20:08
  Speaker 1: All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.
• 3:20:16
  Speaker 1: A horror of this great darkness came on me. The
• 3:20:19
  Speaker 1: cold that smote to my marrow, and the pain I
• 3:20:22
  Speaker 1: felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly
• 3:20:27
  Speaker 1: nausea seized me. Then like a red hot bow in
• 3:20:31
  Speaker 1: the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got
• 3:20:35
  Speaker 1: off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and
• 3:20:39
  Speaker 1: incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood, sick
• 3:20:44
  Speaker 1: and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal.
• 3:20:48
  Speaker 1: There was no mistake now that it was a moving
• 3:20:51
  Speaker 1: thing against the red water of the sea. It was
• 3:20:55
  Speaker 1: a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or
• 3:20:58
  Speaker 1: it may be bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it.
• 3:21:03
  Speaker 1: It seemed black against the weltering blood red water, and
• 3:21:06
  Speaker 1: it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting,
• 3:21:12
  Speaker 1: but a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote
• 3:21:15
  Speaker 1: and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.
• 3:21:22
  Speaker 1: End of chapter eleven, Chapter twelve. So I came back.
• 3:21:29
  Speaker 1: For a long time. I must have been insensible upon
• 3:21:32
  Speaker 1: the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights
• 3:21:35
  Speaker 1: was resumed. The sun got golden again, the sky blue.
• 3:21:40
  Speaker 1: I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the
• 3:21:45
  Speaker 1: land ebbed and flowed, the hand spun backward upon the dials.
• 3:21:50
  Speaker 1: At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses,
• 3:21:54
  Speaker 1: the evidences of decadent humanity. These too changed and passed,
• 3:21:59
  Speaker 1: and others came presently. When the million dial was at zero,
• 3:22:04
  Speaker 1: I slackened speed. I began to recognize our own petty
• 3:22:08
  Speaker 1: and familiar architecture. The thousand's hand ran back to the
• 3:22:12
  Speaker 1: starting point. The day and night flapped slower and slower.
• 3:22:17
  Speaker 1: Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me
• 3:22:21
  Speaker 1: very gently. Now I slowed the mechanism down. I saw
• 3:22:26
  Speaker 1: one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think
• 3:22:29
  Speaker 1: I've told you that when I set out before, my
• 3:22:32
  Speaker 1: velocity became very high. Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling,
• 3:22:38
  Speaker 1: as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned,
• 3:22:42
  Speaker 1: I passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory,
• 3:22:46
  Speaker 1: but now her every motion appeared to be the exact
• 3:22:50
  Speaker 1: inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
• 3:22:54
  Speaker 1: end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost,
• 3:22:58
  Speaker 1: and disappeared behind the door by which he had previously entered.
• 3:23:03
  Speaker 1: Just before that. I seemed to see heilia for a moment,
• 3:23:06
  Speaker 1: but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the
• 3:23:12
  Speaker 1: machine and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory,
• 3:23:17
  Speaker 1: My tools, my appliances just as I had left them.
• 3:23:21
  Speaker 1: I got off the thing, very shaky, and sat down
• 3:23:24
  Speaker 1: upon my bench For several minutes. I trembled violently. Then
• 3:23:30
  Speaker 1: I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
• 3:23:34
  Speaker 1: exactly as it had been. I might have slept there,
• 3:23:38
  Speaker 1: and the whole thing had been a dream, and yet
• 3:23:42
  Speaker 1: not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner
• 3:23:46
  Speaker 1: of the laboratory, it had come to rest again in
• 3:23:49
  Speaker 1: the northwest against the wall where you saw it. That
• 3:23:53
  Speaker 1: gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to
• 3:23:56
  Speaker 1: the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the morlocks,
• 3:24:00
  Speaker 1: and it carried my machine. For a time, my brain
• 3:24:04
  Speaker 1: went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through the
• 3:24:07
  Speaker 1: passage here, limping because my heel was still painful, and
• 3:24:11
  Speaker 1: feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the pall mall gazette on
• 3:24:16
  Speaker 1: the table by the door. I found the date was
• 3:24:19
  Speaker 1: indeed to day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the
• 3:24:22
  Speaker 1: hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and
• 3:24:26
  Speaker 1: the clatter of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick
• 3:24:31
  Speaker 1: and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened
• 3:24:36
  Speaker 1: the door on you. You know the rest. I washed
• 3:24:40
  Speaker 1: and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
• 3:24:45
  Speaker 1: I know, he said, after a pause, that all this
• 3:24:49
  Speaker 1: will be absolutely incredible to you. To me, the one
• 3:24:53
  Speaker 1: incredible thing is that I am here tonight, in this old,
• 3:24:56
  Speaker 1: familiar room, looking into your friendly faces and telling you
• 3:25:01
  Speaker 1: these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No,
• 3:25:07
  Speaker 1: I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as
• 3:25:10
  Speaker 1: a lie or a prophecy. Say, I dreamed it in
• 3:25:14
  Speaker 1: the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies
• 3:25:18
  Speaker 1: of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat
• 3:25:22
  Speaker 1: my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of
• 3:25:26
  Speaker 1: art to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.
• 3:25:30
  Speaker 1: What do you think of it? He took up his
• 3:25:33
  Speaker 1: pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
• 3:25:37
  Speaker 1: with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There
• 3:25:41
  Speaker 1: was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak, and
• 3:25:45
  Speaker 1: shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes
• 3:25:49
  Speaker 1: off the time Traveler's face and looked round at his audience.
• 3:25:53
  Speaker 1: They were in the dark, and little spots of color
• 3:25:56
  Speaker 1: swam before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the
• 3:25:59
  Speaker 1: contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at
• 3:26:03
  Speaker 1: the end of his cigar the sixth. The journalist fumbled
• 3:26:08
  Speaker 1: for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
• 3:26:11
  Speaker 1: were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What
• 3:26:17
  Speaker 1: a pity it is. You're not a writer of stories,
• 3:26:20
  Speaker 1: he said, putting his hand on the time Traveler's shoulder.
• 3:26:24
  Speaker 1: You don't believe it, well, I thought not. The time
• 3:26:30
  Speaker 1: traveler turned to us. Where are the matches, he said?
• 3:26:34
  Speaker 1: He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing to
• 3:26:38
  Speaker 1: tell you the truth. I hardly believe it myself. And
• 3:26:43
  Speaker 1: yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the
• 3:26:47
  Speaker 1: withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned
• 3:26:51
  Speaker 1: over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he
• 3:26:54
  Speaker 1: was looking at some half heeled scars on his knuckles.
• 3:26:58
  Speaker 1: The medical man rose, came to the lamp and examined
• 3:27:01
  Speaker 1: the flowers. The gynasium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned
• 3:27:08
  Speaker 1: forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
• 3:27:12
  Speaker 1: I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one, said the journalist.
• 3:27:15
  Speaker 1: How shall we get home? Plenty of cabs at the station,
• 3:27:19
  Speaker 1: said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man.
• 3:27:25
  Speaker 1: But I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers?
• 3:27:29
  Speaker 1: May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly, certainly,
• 3:27:35
  Speaker 1: not where did you really get them? Said the medical man.
• 3:27:41
  Speaker 1: The time traveler put his hand to his head. He
• 3:27:44
  Speaker 1: spoke like one who is trying to keep hold of
• 3:27:46
  Speaker 1: an idea that eluded him. They were put into my
• 3:27:51
  Speaker 1: pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He stared
• 3:27:55
  Speaker 1: around the room. I'm damned if it isn't all going
• 3:27:59
  Speaker 1: The room and you in the atmosphere of every day
• 3:28:03
  Speaker 1: is too much for my memory. Did I ever make
• 3:28:06
  Speaker 1: a time machine or a model of a time machine?
• 3:28:10
  Speaker 1: Or is it all only a dream? They say life
• 3:28:13
  Speaker 1: is a dream, a precious poor dream at times. But
• 3:28:17
  Speaker 1: I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
• 3:28:22
  Speaker 1: where did the dream come from? I must look at
• 3:28:25
  Speaker 1: that machine, if there is one. He caught up the
• 3:28:29
  Speaker 1: lamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red, through the door
• 3:28:32
  Speaker 1: into the corridor. We followed him. There, in the flickering
• 3:28:36
  Speaker 1: light of the lamp was the machine, sure enough, squat
• 3:28:40
  Speaker 1: ugly and askew, a thing of brass, ebony, ivory and
• 3:28:45
  Speaker 1: translucent glimmering quartz solid to the touch. For I put
• 3:28:50
  Speaker 1: out my hand and felt the rail of it, and
• 3:28:53
  Speaker 1: with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits
• 3:28:56
  Speaker 1: of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one
• 3:28:59
  Speaker 1: race bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down
• 3:29:04
  Speaker 1: on the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
• 3:29:08
  Speaker 1: It's all right now, he said. The story I told
• 3:29:11
  Speaker 1: you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out
• 3:29:15
  Speaker 1: here in the cold. He took up the lamp, and
• 3:29:18
  Speaker 1: in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking room.
• 3:29:22
  Speaker 1: He came into the hall with us and helped the
• 3:29:24
  Speaker 1: editor on with his coat. The medical man looked into
• 3:29:27
  Speaker 1: his face and with a certain hesitation, told him he
• 3:29:31
  Speaker 1: was suffering from over work, at which he laughed hugely.
• 3:29:36
  Speaker 1: I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good night.
• 3:29:41
  Speaker 1: I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the
• 3:29:44
  Speaker 1: tale a gaudy lie. For my own part, I was
• 3:29:48
  Speaker 1: unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
• 3:29:52
  Speaker 1: fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
• 3:29:58
  Speaker 1: lay awake most of the thinking about it. I determined
• 3:30:02
  Speaker 1: to go next day and see the time traveler again.
• 3:30:05
  Speaker 1: I was told he was in the laboratory, and, being
• 3:30:08
  Speaker 1: on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
• 3:30:11
  Speaker 1: The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute
• 3:30:16
  Speaker 1: at the time machine and put out my hand and
• 3:30:19
  Speaker 1: touched the lever. At that the squat substantial looking mass
• 3:30:24
  Speaker 1: swayed like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability
• 3:30:29
  Speaker 1: startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
• 3:30:33
  Speaker 1: the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.
• 3:30:37
  Speaker 1: I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met
• 3:30:41
  Speaker 1: me in the smoking room. He was coming from the house.
• 3:30:44
  Speaker 1: He had a small camera under one arm and a
• 3:30:47
  Speaker 1: knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me
• 3:30:50
  Speaker 1: and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy,
• 3:30:55
  Speaker 1: said he with that thing in there, But is it
• 3:30:59
  Speaker 1: not some hoax? I said, do you really travel through time? Really?
• 3:31:06
  Speaker 1: And truly I do? And he looked frankly into my eyes.
• 3:31:11
  Speaker 1: He hesitated his eye wandered about the room. I only
• 3:31:16
  Speaker 1: want half an hour, he said. I know why you came,
• 3:31:19
  Speaker 1: and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here.
• 3:31:23
  Speaker 1: If you'll stop to lunch, I'll prove you this time
• 3:31:26
  Speaker 1: traveling up to the hilt, specimen and all, if you'll
• 3:31:29
  Speaker 1: forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending than
• 3:31:35
  Speaker 1: the full import of his words, and he nodded and
• 3:31:38
  Speaker 1: went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
• 3:31:41
  Speaker 1: the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair and took
• 3:31:44
  Speaker 1: up a daily paper. What was he going to do
• 3:31:48
  Speaker 1: before lunch time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an
• 3:31:52
  Speaker 1: advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher
• 3:31:55
  Speaker 1: at two. I looked at my watch and saw that
• 3:31:59
  Speaker 1: I could barely say gave that engagement. I got up
• 3:32:02
  Speaker 1: and went down the passage to tell the time traveler.
• 3:32:05
  Speaker 1: As I took hold of the handle of the door,
• 3:32:08
  Speaker 1: I heard an exclamation oddly truncated at the end, and
• 3:32:12
  Speaker 1: a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled
• 3:32:15
  Speaker 1: round me as I opened the door, and from within
• 3:32:18
  Speaker 1: came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor.
• 3:32:22
  Speaker 1: The time traveler was not there. I seemed to see
• 3:32:26
  Speaker 1: a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of
• 3:32:30
  Speaker 1: black and brass for a moment, a figure so transparent
• 3:32:34
  Speaker 1: that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was
• 3:32:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely distinct. But this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes.
• 3:32:43
  Speaker 1: The time machine had gone, say for a subsiding stir
• 3:32:48
  Speaker 1: of dust. The further end of the laboratory was empty.
• 3:32:52
  Speaker 1: A pane of the skylight had apparently just been blown in.
• 3:32:57
  Speaker 1: I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange
• 3:33:02
  Speaker 1: had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what
• 3:33:05
  Speaker 1: the strange thing might be. As I stood staring, the
• 3:33:10
  Speaker 1: door into the garden opened and the man servant appeared.
• 3:33:14
  Speaker 1: We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come.
• 3:33:19
  Speaker 1: Has mister gone out that way? Said I, No, sir,
• 3:33:23
  Speaker 1: no one has come out this way. I was expecting
• 3:33:26
  Speaker 1: to find him here. At that, I understood. At the
• 3:33:31
  Speaker 1: risk of disappointing Richardson, I stayed on, waiting for the
• 3:33:35
  Speaker 1: time Traveler, waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story
• 3:33:40
  Speaker 1: and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him.
• 3:33:44
  Speaker 1: But I am beginning now to fear that I must
• 3:33:47
  Speaker 1: wait a lifetime. The time Traveler vanished three years ago,
• 3:33:53
  Speaker 1: and as everybody knows now, he has never returned epilog
• 3:34:01
  Speaker 1: One cannot choose, but wonder will he ever return. It
• 3:34:05
  Speaker 1: may be that he swept back into the past and
• 3:34:09
  Speaker 1: fell among the blood drinking, hairy savages of the age
• 3:34:12
  Speaker 1: of unpolished stone, into the abysses of the Cretaceous sea,
• 3:34:17
  Speaker 1: or among the grotesque sarians, the huge reptilian brutes of
• 3:34:21
  Speaker 1: the Jurassic times. He may even now, if I may
• 3:34:26
  Speaker 1: use the phrase, be wandering on some plasiosaurus haunted olidic
• 3:34:31
  Speaker 1: coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the
• 3:34:34
  Speaker 1: Triassic age. Or did he go forward into one of
• 3:34:39
  Speaker 1: the nearer ages in which men are still men? But
• 3:34:43
  Speaker 1: with the riddles of our own time answered and its
• 3:34:46
  Speaker 1: wearisome problem solved, into the manhood of the race. For I,
• 3:34:51
  Speaker 1: for my own part, cannot think that these latter days
• 3:34:54
  Speaker 1: of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed
• 3:34:59
  Speaker 1: man and culminating time. I say, for my own part,
• 3:35:04
  Speaker 1: he I know, for the question had been discussed among
• 3:35:07
  Speaker 1: us long before the time machine was made. Thought but
• 3:35:11
  Speaker 1: cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the
• 3:35:15
  Speaker 1: growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must
• 3:35:19
  Speaker 1: inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers. In the end.
• 3:35:24
  Speaker 1: If that is so, it remains for us to live
• 3:35:27
  Speaker 1: as though it were not so. But to me the
• 3:35:30
  Speaker 1: future is still black and blank. He is of vast ignorance,
• 3:35:35
  Speaker 1: lit at a few casual places by the memory of
• 3:35:38
  Speaker 1: his story. And I have by me for my comfort
• 3:35:43
  Speaker 1: two strange white flowers, shriveled now and brown and flat
• 3:35:48
  Speaker 1: and brittle, to witness that even when mind and strength
• 3:35:52
  Speaker 1: had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on
• 3:35:56
  Speaker 1: in the heart of man. The End of the Time
• 3:36:02
  Speaker 1: Machine by H. G. Wells