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H.G. Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
Chapter 9
`We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above
the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning,
and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on
the previous journey.
My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and
then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare.
Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw,
and presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was
slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to
suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the
wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the
darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should
indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been without sleep
for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming
upon me, and the Morlocks with it.
`While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against
their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass
all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The
forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we could get
through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether
safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could
contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was evident that
if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my
firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head
that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the
atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move
for covering our retreat.
`I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in
the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's heat is rarely strong
enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case
in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely
gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder
with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In this
decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red
tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange
thing to Weena.
`She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast
herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and in spite of
her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. For a little way the
glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could see, through the
crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes
adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I
laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very
black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew
accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems.
Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone
down upon us here and there. I struck none of my matches because I had no hand
free. Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my iron
bar.
`For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the
faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the
blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me. I
pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same
queer sound and voices I had heard in the Under-world. There were evidently
several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me.
Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my
arm. And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.
`It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down.
I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the
darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same
peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping
over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and
fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight
amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared
to light is as soon as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was
lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With
a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the
block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and
drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood
behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!
`She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose
to push on, and then there came a horrible realization. In manoeuvring with my
matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several times, and now I had not
the faintest idea in what direction lay my path. For all I knew, I might be
facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold
sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and
encamp where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole,
and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks
and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks' eyes
shone like carbuncles.
`The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two
white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was so
blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind
under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way,
and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my
bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for
since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen.
So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping
up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green
wood and dry sticks, and could economize my camphor. Then I turned to where
Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but she lay
like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.
`Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me
heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire
would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my
exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I
did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark,
and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I
hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and - it had gone! Then they
gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had
slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul.
The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck,
by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the
darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in
a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt little teeth
nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my hand came against my iron
lever. It gave me strength.
I struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short,
I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving
of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.
`The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came
upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the
Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron
bar before me.
The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed.
Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their
movements grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood glaring at the
blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close
on the heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow
luminous. Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me - three battered at
my feet - and then I recognized, with incredulous surprise, that the others
were running, in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away
through the wood in front.
And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish. As I stood agape, I
saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the
branches, and vanish. And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the
slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the
Morlocks' flight.
`Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the
black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my
first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone. The
hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst
into flame, left little time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I
followed in the Morlocks' path. It was a close race.
Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was
outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a
small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and
past me, and went on straight into the fire!
`And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all
that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with
the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted
by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with
yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a
fence of fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled
by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in
their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck
furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me,
killing one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of
one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their
moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare,
and I struck no more of them.
`Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a
quivering horror that made me quick to elude him.
At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures
would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by
killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out again
brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among them and avoided
them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.
`At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange
incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny
noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling uprush
of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare tatters of that red
canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the little
stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with
blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.
`For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit
myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with my
hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again
sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me
awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush
into the flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the
streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps,
and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the
day.
`I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none.
It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I
cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate
to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin
a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself. The
hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest.
>From its summit I could now make out through a haze of smoke the Palace
of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx.
And so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and
thither and moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet
and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated
internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked
slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest
wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming
calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream
than an actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again -
terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of
some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
`But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I
made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. The box
must have leaked before it was lost.
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