give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in
these creatures, when I tell you that none made the
slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing
which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized
this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a
point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her
safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her
round, and I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right The Time Machine
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before I left her. I had got to such a low estimate of her
kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her. In that,
however, I was wrong.
‘This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met
my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning
towards my centre from an exploration, and she received
me with cries of delight and presented me with a big
garland of flowers— evidently made for me and me alone.
The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been
feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my
appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a
little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of
smiles. The creature’s friendliness affected me exactly as a
child’s might have done. We passed each other flowers,
and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I
tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, which,
though I don’t know what it meant, somehow seemed
appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer
friendship which lasted a week, and ended—as I will tell
you!
‘She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me
always. She tried to follow me everywhere, and on my
next journey out and about it went to my heart to tire her
down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me The Time Machine
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rather plaintively. But the problems of the world had to be
mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future
to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I
left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting
were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as
much trouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless
she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I thought it was
mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until it
was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted
upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I
clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely
seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way
that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently
gave my return to the neighbourhood of the White
Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I would
watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I
came over the hill.
‘It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not
yet left the world. She was fearless enough in the daylight,
and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a
foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and
she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the dark,
dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her
was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate The Time Machine
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emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I
discovered then, among other things, that these little
people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept
in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put
them into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one
out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after
dark. Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the
lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena’s distress I
insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering
multitudes.
‘It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd
affection for me triumphed, and for five of the nights of
our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept
with her head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips
away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the
night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I
had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was
drowned, and that sea anemones were feeling over my
face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an
odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of
the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless
and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things
are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is
colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went The Time Machine
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down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in
front of the palace. I thought I would make a virtue of
necessity, and see the sunrise.
‘The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and
the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-
light. The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre
grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I
thought I could see ghosts. There several times, as I
scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I
saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather
quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of
them carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did
not see what became of them. It seemed that they
vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct,
you must understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain,
early-morning feeling you may have known. I doubted
my eyes.
‘As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the
day came on and its vivid colouring returned upon the
world once more, I scanned the view keenly. But I saw no
vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures of
the half light. ‘They must have been ghosts,’ I said; ‘I
wonder whence they dated.’ For a queer notion of Grant
Allen’s came into my head, and amused me. If each The Time Machine
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generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at
last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory they
would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred
Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see
four at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was
thinking of these figures all the morning, until Weena’s
rescue drove them out of my head. I associated them in
some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled
in my first passionate search for the Time Machine. But
Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they
were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my
mind.
‘I think I have said how much hotter than our own was
the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It
may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the
sun. It is usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling
steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with such
speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that
the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the
parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will
blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner
planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact
remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know
it. The Time Machine
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‘Well, one very hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I
was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal
ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there
happened this strange thing: Clambering among these
heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end
and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone.
By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first
impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the
change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim
before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes,
luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was
watching me out of the darkness.
‘The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon
me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the
glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of
the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be
living came to my mind. And then I remembered that
strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some
extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my
voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and
touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways,
and something white ran past me. I turned with my heart
in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its
head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the The Time Machine
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sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of
granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a
black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.
‘My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I
know it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red
eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down
its back. But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see
distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours, or
only with its forearms held very low. After an instant’s
pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could
not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound
obscurity, I came upon one of those round well-like
openings of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen
pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing
have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking
down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large
bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It
made me shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was
clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first
time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind
of ladder down the shaft. Then the light burned my
fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped,
and when I had lit another the little monster had
disappeared. The Time Machine
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‘I do not know how long I sat peering down that well.
It was not for some time that I could succeed in
persuading myself that the thing I had seen was human.
But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not
remained one species, but had differentiated into two
distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-
world were not the sole descendants of our generation,
but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which
had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.
‘I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of
an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true
import. And what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in
my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization? How was
it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-
worlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of
that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself
that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I
must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And
withal I was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of
the beautiful Upper-world people came running in their
amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male
pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.
‘They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the
overturned pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it The Time Machine
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was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for
when I pointed to this one, and tried to frame a question
about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly
distressed and turned away. But they were interested by
my matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried
them again about the well, and again I failed. So presently
I left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what I
could get from her. But my mind was already in
revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and
sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the
import of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the
mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the
meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time
Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion
towards the solution of the economic problem that had
puzzled me.
‘Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of
Man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in
particular which made me think that its rare emergence
above ground was the outcome of a long-continued
underground habit. In the first place, there was the
bleached look common in most animals that live largely in
the dark—the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for
instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for The Time Machine
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reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things—
witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evident
confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling
awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
carriage of the head while in the light—all reinforced the
theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.
‘Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled
enormously, and these tunnellings were the habitat of the
new race. The presence of ventilating shafts and wells
along the hill slopes—everywhere, in fact except along the
river valley —showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it
was in this artificial Underworld that such work as was
necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done?
The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and
went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human
species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my
theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that it fell far
short of the truth.
‘At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age,
it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening
of the present merely temporary and social difference
