The Time Machine

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68 CHAPTER 11. sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black. ‘A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal—there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing—against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.
Chapter 12 ‘So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism down. ‘I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash. ‘Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream. ‘And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine. ‘For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o’clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt 69
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The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 189
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4 CONTENTS
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6 CHAPTER 1. a fourth, Time. There
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8 CHAPTER 1. Hastings, for instance
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10 CHAPTER 1. this time.’ ‘But,
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12 CHAPTER 2. The Psychologist was
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14 CHAPTER 2. his plate away, and l
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16 CHAPTER 3. every minute, and eve
Page 18 and 19: 18 CHAPTER 3. ‘Already I saw othe
Page 20 and 21: 20 CHAPTER 4. imitating the sound o
Page 22 and 23: 22 CHAPTER 4. more easily fatigued.
Page 24 and 25: 24 CHAPTER 4. the harvest was what
Page 26 and 27: 26 CHAPTER 4.
Page 28 and 29: 28 CHAPTER 5. hidden in a corner, a
Page 30 and 31: 30 CHAPTER 5. was after him, had hi
Page 32 and 33: 32 CHAPTER 5. no other. Let me put
Page 34 and 35: 34 CHAPTER 5. ‘As the eastern sky
Page 36 and 37: 36 CHAPTER 5. instance. Then, those
Page 40 and 41: 40 CHAPTER 6. and the caresses of l
Page 42 and 43: 42 CHAPTER 6. approaching me again.
Page 44 and 45: 44 CHAPTER 7. learn one old lesson
Page 46 and 47: 46 CHAPTER 7. the traditions, the c
Page 50 and 51: 50 CHAPTER 8. if with extreme slown
Page 52 and 53: 52 CHAPTER 8. horrible creatures we
Page 56 and 57: 56 CHAPTER 9. to Weena. ‘She want
Page 58 and 59: 58 CHAPTER 9. fire coming after me.
Page 62 and 63: 62 CHAPTER 10. ing in contact with
Page 66 and 67: 66 CHAPTER 11. ‘I stopped very ge
Page 70 and 71: 70 CHAPTER 12. so sick and weak. Th
Page 72 and 73: 72 CHAPTER 12. I opened the door, a
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The Time Machine

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