them up together. It must have been very queer to them.
Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened.
When I saw them standing round me, it came into my
head that I was doing as foolish a thing as it was possible
for me to do under the circumstances, in trying to revive
the sensation of fear. For, reasoning from their daylight
behaviour, I thought that fear must be forgotten.
‘Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking
one of the people over in my course, went blundering
across the big dining-hall again, out under the moonlight.
I heard cries of terror and their little feet running and
stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did as The Time Machine
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the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the
unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt
hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a strange animal in
an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro,
screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a
memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair
wore away; of looking in this impossible place and that; of
groping among moon-lit ruins and touching strange
creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the
ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute
wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept,
and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of
sparrows were hopping round me on the turf within reach
of my arm.
‘I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to
remember how I had got there, and why I had such a
profound sense of desertion and despair. Then things came
clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable daylight, I
could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw the
wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with
myself. ‘Suppose the worst?’ I said. ‘Suppose the machine
altogether lost—perhaps destroyed? It behooves me to be
calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a
clear idea of the method of my loss, and the means of The Time Machine
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getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I
may make another.’ That would be my only hope,
perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it was a
beautiful and curious world.
‘But probably, the machine had only been taken away.
Still, I must be calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and
recover it by force or cunning. And with that I scrambled
to my feet and looked about me, wondering where I
could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled. The
freshness of the morning made me desire an equal
freshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went
about my business, I found myself wondering at my
intense excitement overnight. I made a careful
examination of the ground about the little lawn. I wasted
some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as well as I
was able, to such of the little people as came by. They all
failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid,
some thought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the
hardest task in the world to keep my hands off their pretty
laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but the devil
begotten of fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still
eager to take advantage of my perplexity. The turf gave
better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, about
midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks The Time Machine
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of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the
overturned machine. There were other signs of removal
about, with queer narrow footprints like those I could
imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer attention
to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It
was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep
framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these.
The pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care
I found them discontinuous with the frames. There were
no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if they
were doors, as I supposed, opened from within. One thing
was clear enough to my mind. It took no very great
mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside
that pedestal. But how it got there was a different
problem.
‘I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming
through the bushes and under some blossom-covered
apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling to them and
beckoned them to me. They came, and then, pointing to
the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open it.
But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very
oddly. I don’t know how to convey their expression to
you. Suppose you were to use a grossly improper gesture
to a delicate-minded woman—it is how she would look. The Time Machine
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They went off as if they had received the last possible
insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next,
with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made
me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted
the Time Machine, and I tried him once more. As he
turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of
me. In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose
part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him
towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and
repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.
‘But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the
bronze panels. I thought I heard something stir inside—to
be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle—but
I must have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from
the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened a
coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in
powdery flakes. The delicate little people must have heard
me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on either
hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon
the slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I
sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to
watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could
work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for
twenty-four hours—that is another matter. The Time Machine
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‘I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly
through the bushes towards the hill again. ‘Patience,’ said I
to myself. ‘If you want your machine again you must leave
that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine
away, it’s little good your wrecking their bronze panels,
and if they don’t, you will get it back as soon as you can
ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a
puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania.
Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too
hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues
to it all.’ Then suddenly the humour of the situation came
into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in
study and toil to get into the future age, and now my
passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the
most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a
man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could
not help myself. I laughed aloud.
‘Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the
little people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it
may have had something to do with my hammering at the
gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. I
was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain
from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or
two things got back to the old footing. I made what The Time Machine
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progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed
my explorations here and there. Either I missed some
subtle point or their language was excessively simple—
almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and
verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or
little use of figurative language. Their sentences were
usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or
understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined
to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery
of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible
in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge
would lead me back to them in a natural way. Yet a
certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a
circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.
‘So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same
exuberant richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I
climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings,
endlessly varied in material and style, the same clustering
thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees and
tree-ferns. Here and there water shone like silver, and
beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so
faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature,
which presently attracted my attention, was the presence
of certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a The Time Machine
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very great depth. One lay by the path up the hill, which I
had followed during my first walk. Like the others, it was
rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by
a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these
wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could
see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection with
a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound:
a thud-thud-thud, like the beating of some big engine;
and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a
steady current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a
scrap of paper into the throat of one, and, instead of
fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out
of sight.
‘After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with
tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for
above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as
one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting
things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an
extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true
import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to
associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It
was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.
‘And here I must admit that I learned very little of
drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the like The Time Machine
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conveniences, during my time in this real future. In some
of these visions of Utopias and coming times which I have
read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and
social arrangements, and so forth. But while such details
are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is
contained in one’s imagination, they are altogether
inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I found
here. Conceive the tale of London which a negro, fresh
from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What
would he know of railway companies, of social
movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the
Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like?
Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain these
things to him! And even of what he knew, how much
could he make his untravelled friend either apprehend or
believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a
negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide
the interval between myself and these of the Golden Age!
I was sensible of much which was unseen, and which
contributed to my comfort; but save for a general
impression of automatic organization, I fear I can convey
very little of the difference to your mind.
‘In the matter of sepulchre, for instance, I could see no
signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But The Time Machine
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it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries
(or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my
explorings. This, again, was a question I deliberately put to
myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon
the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a
further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and
infirm among this people there were none.
‘I must confess that my satisfaction with my first
theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent
humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of no
other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big palaces I
had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls
and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no
appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in
pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their
sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex
specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be
made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a
creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops,
no sign of importations among them. They spent all their
time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making
love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I
could not see how things were kept going. The Time Machine
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‘Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I
knew not what, had taken it into the hollow pedestal of
the White Sphinx. Why? For the life of me I could not
imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those flickering
pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt—how shall I put it?
Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and
there in excellent plain English, and interpolated
therewith, others made up of words, of letters even,
absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third day of my
visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!
‘That day, too, I made a friend—of a sort. It happened
that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in
a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began
drifting downstream. The main current ran rather swiftly,
but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will
