a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew
brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon,
lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks
about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace
of life that I could see at first was the intensely green
vegetation that covered every projecting point on their
south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees
on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like
these grow in a perpetual twilight.
‘The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea
stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp
bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no
breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was
stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle
breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving
and living. And along the margin where the water
sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt—pink
under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my
head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The
sensation reminded me of my only experience of The Time Machine
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mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more
rarefied than it is now.
‘Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream,
and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and
flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some
low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal
that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the
machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near,
what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving
slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a
monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as
large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly
and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae,
like carters’ whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes
gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its
back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly
bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and
there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth
flickering and feeling as it moved.
‘As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards
me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had
lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but
in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came
another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something The Time Machine
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threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a
frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the
antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind
me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth
was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws,
smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In
a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a
month between myself and these monsters. But I was still
on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon
as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here
and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of
intense green.
‘I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation
that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the
northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach
crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the
uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants,
the thin air that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an
appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there
was the same red sun—a little larger, a little duller—the
same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of
earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green
weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a
curved pale line like a vast new moon. The Time Machine
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‘So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides
of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of
the earth’s fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun
grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of
the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million
years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come
to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens.
Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of
crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid
green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it
was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare
white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the
north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of
the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks
pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea
margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main
expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal
sunset, was still unfrozen.
‘I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life
remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me
in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving,
in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone
testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had
appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the The Time Machine
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beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about
upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it,
and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the
black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were
intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.
‘Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline
of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had
appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute
perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping
over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was
beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was
passing across the sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to
be the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe
that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet
passing very near to the earth.
‘The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow
in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white
flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the
sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds
the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey
the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of
sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that
makes the background of our lives—all that was over. As
the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more The Time Machine
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abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air
more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the
other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into
blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the
black central shadow of the eclipse 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. The Time Machine
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XII
‘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 Time Machine
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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 shaky, 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 The Time Machine
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your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so
sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and
opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed,
and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
‘I know,’ he said, after a pause, ‘that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible
thing is that I am here to-night in this old familiar room
looking into your friendly faces and telling you these
strange adventures.’
He looked at the Medical Man. ‘No. I cannot expect
you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I
dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been
speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have
hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a
mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a
story, what do you think of it?’
He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed
manner, to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the
grate. There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began
to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my
eyes off the Time Traveller’s face, and looked round at his
audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of colour
swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in
the contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking The Time Machine
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hard at the end of his cigar—the sixth. The Journalist
fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
were motionless.
The Editor stood up with a sigh. ‘What a pity it is
you’re not a writer of stories!’ he said, putting his hand on
the Time Traveller’s shoulder.
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘Well——’
‘I thought not.’
The Time Traveller turned to us. ‘Where are the
matches?’ he said. He lit one and spoke over his pipe,
puffing. ‘To tell you the truth … I hardly believe it
myself…. And yet …’
His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered
white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned over
the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at
some half-healed scars on his knuckles.
The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and
examined the flowers. ‘The gynaeceum’s odd,’ he said.
The Psychologist leant forward to see, holding out his
hand for a specimen.
‘I’m hanged if it isn’t a quarter to one,’ said the
Journalist. ‘How shall we get home?’
‘Plenty of cabs at the station,’ said the Psychologist. The Time Machine
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‘It’s a curious thing,’ said the Medical Man; ‘but I
certainly don’t know the natural order of these flowers.
May I have them?’
The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly:
‘Certainly not.’
‘Where did you really get them?’ said the Medical
Man.
The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke
like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that
eluded him. ‘They were put into my pocket by Weena,
when I travelled into Time.’ He stared round the room.
‘I’m damned if it isn’t all going. This room and you and
the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory.
Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time
Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a
dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand
another that won’t fit. It’s madness. And where did the
dream come from? … I must look at that machine. If
there is one!’
He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring
