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

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Chapter nine. We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part
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above the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next
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morning, and ere the dusk, I proposed pushing through the woods that had
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stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as
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possible that night, and then building a fire to sleep in the protection of
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its glare. Accordingly, as we went along, I gathered any sticks or
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dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter thus
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loaded. Our progress was slower than I had anticipated, And besides, Weena
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was tired, and I began to suffer from sleepiness too, so that it
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was full night before we reached the wood upon the shrubby hill of its edge.
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Weena would have stopped fearing the darkness before us, but a singular sense
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of impending calamity that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me
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onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and
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I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me and the morlocks
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with it. While we hesitated among the black bushes behind us and dim against
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their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass
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all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach.
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The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across if we
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could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to
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me, was an altogether safer resting place. I thought that with my matches
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and my camphor, I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods.
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Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands,
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I should have to abandon my firewood. So rather reluctantly I put it
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down, and then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends
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behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding,
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but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.
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I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must
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be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate, the sun's heat
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is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops,
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as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and blacken,
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but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smolder
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with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In
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this decadence, too, the art of fire making had been forgotten on the
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earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an
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altogether new and strange thing to Weena. She wanted to run to it and
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play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it had I
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not restrained her. But I caught her up, and, in spite of
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her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood for a little way.
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The glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could
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see through the crowded stems that from my heap of sticks, the blaze had
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spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up
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the grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again to
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the dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena clung to
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me convulsively, But there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
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darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead, it was
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simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us.
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Here and there I struck none of my matches. Because I had no
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hand free upon my left arm, I carried my little one in my right
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right hand. I had my iron bar for some way. I heard nothing
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but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above,
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and my own breathing, and the throb of the blood vessels in my
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ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me. I pushed
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on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same
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queer sound and voices I had heard in the underworld. There were evidently several
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of the morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in
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another minute, I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my
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arm, and Weena shivered violently and became quite still. It was time for
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a match, but to get one, I must put her down. I
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did so, and as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in
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the darkness about my knees. Perfectly silent on her part, and with the
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same peculiar cooing sounds from the more soft little hands, too were creeping over
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my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and
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fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks
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in flight amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my
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pocket and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane. Then
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I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless,
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with her face to the ground. With a sudden fright, I stooped to
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her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and
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flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove
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back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The
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wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company. She
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seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to
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push on. And then there came a horrible realization. In maneuvering with my
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matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several times, and now I
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had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path. For all I
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knew I might be facing back towards the palace of green porcelain, I found
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myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do.
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I determined to build a fire, and in camp where we were, I
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put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bowl, and very hastily,
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as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves
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here and there out of the darkness round me. The morlock's eyes shone like
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carbuncles. The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and
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as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily
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away. One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me,
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and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He
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gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down.
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I lit another piece of camphor and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I
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noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, For since my arrival
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on the time machine a matter of a week, no rain had fallen.
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So instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping
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up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking, smoky fire
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of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my camphor. Then I
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turned to where Lena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could
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to revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could not even
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satisfy myself whether or not she breathed. Now, the smoke of the fire
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beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden
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Moreover, the vapor of camphor was in the My fire would not need replenishing
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for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my exertion, and
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sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that
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I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes.
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But all was dark, and the morlocks had their hands upon me, flinging
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off their clinging fingers. I hastily felt in my pocket for the match box,
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and it had gone. Then they gripped and closed with me again.
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In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my
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fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul.
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The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by
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the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down.
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It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all those soft creatures heaped upon
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me. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web. I
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was overpowered and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck.
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I rolled over, and as I did so, my hand came against my
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iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up, shaking the human
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rats from me and holding the bar short. I thrust where I judged their
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faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under
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my blows, and for a moment I was free. The strange exultation that
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so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me. I knew that both
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I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the morlots pay for
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their meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron
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bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of
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them. A minute passed, their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch
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of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came within reach.
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I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope, what if the
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Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing.
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The darkness seemed to grow luminous, very dimly. I began to see
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the morlocks about me, Three battered at my feet, and then I recognized
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with incredulous surprise that the others were running in an incessant stream, as it
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seemed, from behind me and away through the wood in front, and their
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backs seemed no longer white but reddish. As I stood agape, I saw
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a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the branches and
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vanish. And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous
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murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and
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the morlock's flight. Stepping out from behind my tree, and looking back,
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I saw through the black pillars of the nearer trees the flames of the burning
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forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that, I
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looked for Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me,
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the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time
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for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the morlock's path.
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It was a close race. Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on
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my right as I ran that I was out flanked and had to strike off
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to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open space,
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and as I did so, a morlock came blundering towards me, and passed
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me and went on straight into the fire. And now I was able to
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see the most weird and horrible thing I think of all that I beheld in
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that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection
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of the fire. In the center was a hill or tumulus, surmounted by
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a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with
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yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of
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fire. Upon the hillside were some thirty or forty morlocks, dazzled by the
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light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment.
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At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck furiously at them
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with my bar, in a frenzy of fear as they approached me, killing
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one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one
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of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans,
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I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and
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I struck no more of them. Yet every now and then one would come
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straight towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made ME quick to elude
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him. At one time, the flames died down somewhat, and I feared
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the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of
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beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should happen. But the
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fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about
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the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena.
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But Weena was gone. At last. I sat down on the summit of
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the hillock and watched this strange, incredible company of blind things, groping to
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and fro and making uncanny noises to each other as the glare of the fire
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beat on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky and through
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the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another
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universe shown the little stars. Two or three morlocks came blundering into me,
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and I drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did
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so. For the most part of that night, I was persuaded it was
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a nightmare. I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake.
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I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again,
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and wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would
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fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice
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I saw morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony, and rush
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into the flames. But at last, above the subsiding red of the fire,
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above the streaming masses of black smoke, and the whitening and blackening tree
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stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light
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of the day. I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were
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none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the
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forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped
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the awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that,
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I was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me,
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But I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a
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kind of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out,
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through a haze of smoke, the palace of green porcelain, and from
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that I could get my bearings for the white Sphinx, and so leaving the
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remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning. As the
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day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across
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smoking ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the
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hiding place of the time machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost
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exhausted as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible
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death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now in this old,
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familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an
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actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again, terribly alone.
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I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside,
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of some of you, And with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
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But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky,
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I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches.
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The box must have leaked before it was lost. End of Chapter nine