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08 - The Time Machine - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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Chapter eight. I found the Palace of green porcelain when we approached it about
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noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in
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its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the
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corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy down and looking northeastward.
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Before I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary,
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or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must have once been.
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I thought, then, though I never followed up the thought of what might
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have happened, or might be happening to the living things in the sea.
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The material of the palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along
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the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I thought
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rather foolishly that Weena might help me to interpret this, but I only learned
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that that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head. She always
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seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because
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her affection was so human. Within the big valves of the door, which
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were open and broken, we found instead of the customary hall, a long
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gallery lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of
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a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array
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of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same gray covering. Then I perceived,
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standing strange and gaunt in the center of the hall, what was clearly the
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lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it
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was some extinct creature after the fashion of the megatherium. The skull and upper
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bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where
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rain water had dropped through a leak in the room, the thing itself had
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been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a
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brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side, I found
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what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I
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found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must have
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been air tight, to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents.
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Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter day South Kensington. Here
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apparently was the palaeontological section, and a very splendid array of fossils. It
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must have been though the inevitable process of decay, that had been staved off
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for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi,
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lost ninety nine hundreds of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness,
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if with extreme slowness, at work again upon all its treasures. Here and
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there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils,
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broken to pieces, or threaded in strings upon reeds, and the cases had
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in some instances been bodily removed by the morlocks. As I judged, the
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place was very silent, the thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who
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had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently
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came as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood
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beside me. And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument
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of an intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented.
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Even my preoccupation about the time machine receded a little from my mind.
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To judge, from the size of the place, this palace of green porcelain
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had a great deal more in it than a gallery of paleontology, possibly historical
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galleries. It might be even a library. To me, at least in
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my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of old
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time geology. In decay exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to
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the first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of
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a block of sulfur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find
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no saltpeter, indeed no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesce ages
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ago. Yet the sulfur hung in my mind and set up a train of
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thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on
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the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had little
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interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a
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very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this
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section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out
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of recognition. A few shriveled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed
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animals, desiccated mummies, and jars that had once held spirit. A brown
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dust of departed plants. That was all. I was sorry for that,
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because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by which the conquest
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of animated nature had been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply
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colossal proportions, but singularly ill lit, the floor of it running downward at
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a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At intervals, white
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globes hung from the ceiling, many of them cracked and smashed, which suggested
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that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my
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element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big
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machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, some still fairly complete.
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You know, I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined
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to linger among these, the more so as for the most part they had
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the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at what
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they were. For I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles, I
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should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.
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Suddenly, Weena came very close to my side so suddenly that she startled
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me. Had it not been for her, I do not think I should
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have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. Footnote. It
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may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that
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the museum was built into the side of a hill. Editor. The end
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I had come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare
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slit like windows. As you went down the length, the ground came up
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against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the area of
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a London house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the
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top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been
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too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light until Weena's increasing
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apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last
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into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then as I looked round me,
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I saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less. Even
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further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of
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small, narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the morlocks revived.
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At that I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination
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of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the
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afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no
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means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the
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gallery, I heard a peculiar pattering and the same odd noises I had heard
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down the well. I took Weena's hand, then struck with a sudden idea,
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I left her and turned to a machine, from which projected a lever
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not unlike those in a signal box. Clambering up the stand and grasping this
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lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon its sideways. Suddenly,
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Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had
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judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's
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strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand, more than
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sufficient, I judged for any morlock's skull I might encounter. And I longed
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very much to kill a morlock, or so very inhuman you may think to
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want to go killing one's own descendants. But it was impossible, somehow to
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feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena and a
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persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder, my time machine
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might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes.
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I heard, well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other.
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I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one,
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which, at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered
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flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it I
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presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to
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pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there
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were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had
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I been a literary man, I might perhaps have moralized upon the futility of
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all ms ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with
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the keenest force was the enormous waste of labor to which this somber wilderness of
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rotting paper testified. At the time, I will confess that I thought chiefly
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of the philosophical transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics. Then,
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going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a
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gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful
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discoveries. Except at one end, where the roof had collapsed, this gallery
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was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case, and at last,
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in one of the really air tight cases, I found a box of
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matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good, they were
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not even damp. I turned to weena dance. I cried to her in
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her own tongue, for now I had a weapon, indeed, against the
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horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the
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thick soft carpeting of dust, to Ween, as huge delight, I solemnly
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performed a kind of composite dance, whistling the land of the leal as cheerfully
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as I could. In part it was a modest can can, in part
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a step dance, in part a skirt dance, so far as my tail
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coat permitted, and in part original. For I am naturally inventive, as
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you know now, I still think that for this box of matches to have
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escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was most strange. As for me
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it was a most fortunate thing. Yet oddly enough I found a far unlikelier
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substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar that,
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by chance, I suppose had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at
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first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly, But the
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odor of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay, this volatile substance had
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chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of
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a Sepia painting I had once seen, done from the ink of a fossil
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bellumnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago. I was
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about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burned
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with a good bright flame, was in fact an excellent candle, and I
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put it in my pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any
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means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet, my iron crowbar was
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the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless, I left that gallery
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greatly elated. I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon.
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It would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
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the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms,
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and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I
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could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against
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the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles,
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and most were masses of rust. But many were of some new metal,
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and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there may once have been
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had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered, perhaps,
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I thought, by an explosion. Among the specimens. In another place
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was a vast array of idols Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every
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country on Earth, I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible
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impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a stea tight monster from
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South America that particularly took my fancy. As the evening drew on my interest,
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Waned, I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often
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ruinous. The exhibit sometimes mere heaps of rust, and late nite sometimes fresher.
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In one place, I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin
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mine, and then, by the merest accident, I discovered in an air
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tight case two dynamite cartridges. I shouted eureka and smashed the case with joy.
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Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side
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gallery, I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I
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did in waiting five ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came.
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Of course, the things were dummies, as I might of guess from their
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presence. I really believed that had they not been so, I should have
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rushed off incontinently and blown sphinx bronze doors, and as it proved my chances
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of finding the time machine all together into non existence. It was after that
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I think that we came to a little open court within the palace. It
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was turfed and had three fruit trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves.
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Towards sunset, I began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us,
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and my inaccessible hiding place had still to be found. But that troubled
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me very little, now I had in my possession a thing that was perhaps
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the best of all defenses against the Morlocks. I had matches. I had
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the camphor in my pocket too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed
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to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night
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in the open, protected by a fire. In the morning there was the
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getting of the time machine. Towards that As yet I had only my iron
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mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards
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those bronze doors. Up to this I had refrained from forcing them, largely
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because of the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as
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being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether
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inadequate for the work. End of Chapter eight