The Time Ships

[1] The Vale of Thames

The hands of my chronometric dials whirled around. The sun became a streak of fire, then merged into a brilliant arch, with the moon a whirling, fluctuating band. Trees shivered through their seasons, almost too fast for me to follow. The sky assumed a wonderful deepness of blue, like a midsummer twilight, with the clouds rendered happily invisible.

The looming, translucent shape of my house soon fell away from me. The landscape grew vague, and once more the splendid architecture of the Age of Buildings washed over Richmond Hill like a tide. I saw nothing of the peculiarities which had characterized the construction of Nebogipfel’s History: the stilling of the earth’s rotation, the building of the Sphere about the sun, and so forth. Presently I watched that tide of deeper green cover the hill-side and remain there without the interruption of winter; and I knew I had reached that happier future age in which warmer climes have returned to Britain — it was once more like the Palaeocene, I thought with a stab of nostalgia.

I kept my eyes wide for any hint of the Watchers, but I could see nothing of them. The Watchers — those immense, unimaginable minds, outcroppings of the great reefs of intellect which inhabit the Optimal History — had done with me now, and my destiny was in my own hands. I felt a grim satisfaction at that, and — with the day-count on my dials passing Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand — I hauled carefully at the stopping-lever.

I caught a last glimpse of the moon as it spun through its phases, waning to darkness. I remembered that I had set off, with Weena, on that last jaunt to the Palace of Green Porcelain just before the time the little Eloi called the Dark Nights: that rayless obscurity during the dark of the moon, when the Morlocks emerged, and worked their will on the Eloi. How foolish I had been! I thought now; how impetuous, unthinking — how careless I had been of poor Weena — to have set off on such an expedition, at such a time of danger.

Well, I thought with a certain grimness, now I had returned; and I was determined to put right the mistakes of my past, or die in the attempt.

With a lurch, the machine dropped out of the gray tumult, and sunlight broke over me, heavy and warm and immediate. The chronometric dials rattled to a stop: it was Day 292,495,940 — the precise day, in the Year A.D. 802,701, on which I had lost Weena.

I sat on the familiar hill-side. The light of the sun was brilliant, and I had to shade my eyes. Because I had launched the machine from the garden at the rear of the house rather than the laboratory, I was perhaps twenty yards further down that little rhododendron lawn than when I had first arrived here. Behind me, a little higher up the Hill, I saw the familiar profile of the White Sphinx, with its inscrutable half-smile fixed forever. The bronze base remained thick with verdigris, although here and there I could see where the molded inlays had been flattened by my futile attempts to break into the chamber within, and to retrieve the stolen Time Machine; and the grass was scarred and cut, showing where the Morlocks had dragged my machine off into the pedestal.

The stolen machine was in there now, I realized with a jolt. It was odd to think of that other machine sitting mere yards from me in the obscurity of that chamber, while I sat on this copy, perfect in every way, which glittered on the grass!

I detached and pocketed my control levers, and stepped onto the ground. From the angle of the sun, I judged it to be perhaps three in the afternoon, and the air was warm and moist.

To get a better view of things, I walked perhaps a half-mile to the southeast, to the brow of what had been Richmond Hill. In my day the Terrace had stood here, with its expensive frontage and wide views of the river and the country beyond to the west; now, a loose stand of trees had climbed over the Hill’s crest — there was no sign of the Terrace, and I imagined that even the founds of the houses must have been obliterated by the action of tree-roots — but still, just as it had in 1891, the countryside fell away to the south and west, most attractively.

There was a bench set here, of that yellow metal I had seen before; it was corroded with a red rust, and its arm-rests were filed into the semblance of the creatures of some forgotten myth. A nettle, with large leaves tinted beautifully brown, had climbed over the chair, but I pulled this away — it was without stings — and I sat down, for I was already warm and perspiring.

The sun lay quite low in the sky, to the west, and its light glimmered from the scattered architecture and the bodies of water which punctuated the verdant landscape. The haze of heat lay everywhere on the land. Time, and the patient evolutions of geology, had metamorphosed this landscape from my day; but I could recognize several features, reshaped though they were, and there was still a dreamy beauty about the poet’s “matchless vale of Thames.” The silver ribbon of the river was some distance removed from me; as I have noted elsewhere, the Thames had cut through a bow in its course and now progressed direct from Hampton to Kew. And it had deepened its valley; thus Richmond was now set high on the side of a broad valley, perhaps a mile from the water. I thought I recognized what had been Glover’s Island as a sort of wooded knoll in the center of the old bed. Petersham Meadows retained much of its modern profile; but it was raised far above the level of the river now, and I imagined the area to be much less marshy than in my day.

The great buildings of this Age were dotted about, with their intricate parapets and tall columns, elegant and abandoned: they were spikes of architectural bone protruding from the hill-side’s green-clad flank. Perhaps a mile from me I saw that large building, a mass of granite and aluminum, to which I had climbed on my first evening. Here and there huge figures, as beautiful and enigmatic as my Sphinx, lifted their heads from the general greenery, and everywhere I saw the cupolas and chimneys that were the signatures of the Morlocks. The huge flowers of this latter day were everywhere, with their gleaming white petals and shining leaves. Not for the first time, this landscape, with its extraordinary and beautiful blooms, its pagodas and cupolas nestling among the green, reminded me of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in my day; but it was a Kew that had covered all of England, and had grown wild and neglected.

On the horizon there was a large building I had not noticed before. It was almost lost in the mists of the north-west, in the direction of modern Windsor; but it was too remote and faint for me to make out details. I promised myself that some day I should make the trek out to Windsor, for surely, if anything of my day had survived the evolution and neglect of the intervening millennia, it would be a relic of the massive Norman keep there.

I turned now and saw how the countryside fell away in the direction of modern Banstead, and I made out that pattern of copses and hills, with here and there the glint of water, which had become familiar to me during my earlier explorations. And it was in that direction — perhaps eighteen or twenty miles distant — that the Palace of Green Porcelain lay. Peering that way now I thought I could make out a hint of that structure’s pinnacles; but my eyes were not what they were, and I was not sure.

I had hiked to that Palace, with Weena, in search of weapons and other provisions with which to take the fight to the Morlocks. Indeed, if I remembered correctly, I — my earlier self — must be rooting about within those polished green walls even now!

Perhaps ten miles away, a barrier interposed between myself and the Palace: a knot of dark forest. Even in the daylight it made a dark, sinister splash, at least a mile thick. Carrying Weena, I had made through that wood safely enough the first time, for we had waited for daylight to make the crossing; but the second time, on our return from the Palace (tonight!) I would let my impatience and fatigue get the better of me. Determined to return to the Sphinx as soon as possible, and to set to work retrieving my machine, I would push into that wood in the darkness — and fall asleep — and the Morlocks would descend on us, and take Weena.

I had been lucky to escape that folly with my life, I knew; and as for poor Weena…

But I put aside these feelings of shame, now, for I was here, I reminded myself, to make amends for all that.

It was early enough for me to reach that wood before the daylight faded. I was without weapons, of course, but my purpose here was not to fight the Morlocks — I had done with that — but simply to rescue Weena. And for that, I calculated, I should need no more powerful weapons than my intellect and my fists.

[2] A Walk

The Time Machine itself looked very exposed, there on the hill-side with its brass and nickel glittering, and — although I had no intention to use it again — I decided to conceal it. There was a copse nearby, and I dragged the squat machine there and covered it with branches and leaves. This took me some effort — the machine was a bulky affair — and I was left perspiring, and the rails cut deep grooves in the turf where I had hauled it.

I rested for a few minutes, and then, with a will, I set off down the hill-side in the direction of Banstead.

I had traveled barely a hundred yards when I heard voices. For a moment I was startled, thinking — despite the daylight — that it might be Morlocks. But the voices were quite human, and speaking that peculiar, simple sing-song which is characteristic of the Eloi; and now a party, five or six, of those little people emerged from a copse onto a pathway leading up to my Sphinx. I was struck afresh at how slight and small they were — no larger than the children of my time, male and female alike — and clad in those simple purple tunics and sandals.

The similarities with my first arrival in this Age struck me immediately; for I had been chanced upon by a party of Eloi in just such a fashion. I remembered how they had approached me without fear — more with curiosity — and had laughed and spoken to me.

Now, though, they came up with circumspection: in fact, I thought they shied away. I opened my hands and smiled, in tending to show that I meant no harm; but I knew well enough the cause of this changed perception: it was what they had seen already of the dangerous and erratic behavior of my earlier self, especially during my unhinging after the theft of the Time Machine. These Eloi were entitled to their caution!

I did not press the case, and the Eloi went on around me, up the hill-side towards the rhododendron lawn; as soon as I was out of their sight their speech resumed in its bubbling rhythms.

I struck across the countryside towards the wood. Everywhere I saw those wells which led, I knew, to the subterranean world of the Morlocks — and from which emitted, if I drew close enough to hear, the implacable thud-thud-thud of their great machines. Sweat broke across my brow and chest — for the day remained hot, despite the dipping of the afternoon sun — and I felt my breath scratch in and out of my lungs.

With my immersion in this world, my emotions seemed to waken also. Weena, limited creature though she was, had shown me affection, the only creature in all this world of 802,701 to do so; and her loss had caused me the most intense wretchedness. But, when I had come to recount the tale to my companions by the familiar glow of my own fireside in 1891, that grief had been etiolated into a pale sketch of itself; Weena had become like the memory of a dream, quite unreal.

Well, now I was here once more, tramping across this familiar country, and all that primal grief came back to me — it was as if I had never left here — and it fueled my every footstep.

As I walked on a great hunger fell on me. I realized that I could not remember the last time I had eaten — it must have been before Nebogipfel and I departed firm the Age of White Earth — although, I speculated, it might be true to say that this body had never partaken of food, if it had been reconstructed by the Watchers as Nebogipfel had hinted! Well, whatever the philosophical niceties, my hunger was soon gnawing at my belly, and I began to feel a weariness from the heat. I came past an eating hall — a great, gray edifice of fretted stone — and I made a detour from my route.

I entered through a carved archway, with its decorations badly weatherworn and broken up. Within I found a single great chamber hung with brown, and the floor was set with blocks of that hard white metal I had observed before, worn into tracks by the soft feet of innumerable generations of Eloi. Slabs of polished stone formed tables, on which were heaped piles of fruit; and around the tables were gathered little clusters of Eloi, in their pretty tunics, eating and jabbering to each other like so many cage-birds.

I stood there in my dingy jungle twill — that relic of the Palaeocene was quite out of place in all that sunlit prettiness, and I mused that the Watchers might have outfitted me more elegantly! — and a group of the Eloi came to me and clustered around. I felt little hands on me, like soft tentacles, pulling at my shirt. Their faces had the small mouths, pointed chins and tiny ears characteristic of their race, but these seemed to be a different set of Eloi from those I had encountered near the Sphinx; and these little folk had no great memory, and therefore no fear, of me.

I had come here to rescue one of their kind, not to commit more of that graceless barbarism which had disfigured my previous visit; so I submitted to their inspection with good grace and open hands.

I made for the tables, followed everywhere by a little gaggle of the Eloi. I found a cluster of hypertrophied strawberries, and I crammed these into my mouth; and it was not long before I found several samples of that floury fruit in its three-sided husk which had proved my particular favorite before. I collected a haul I judged sufficient, found a darker, shaded corner, and settled down to eat, surrounded by a little wall of the curious Eloi.

I smiled at the Eloi, welcoming them, and tried to remember those scraps of their simple speech which I had learned before. As I spoke their little faces pressed around me, their eyes wide in the dark, their red lips parted like children’s. I relaxed. I think it was the plainness of this encounter, the easy humanity of it, which entranced me then; I had suffered too much inhuman strangeness recently! The Eloi were not human, I knew — in their way they were as alien to me as the Morlocks — but they were a good facsimile.

I seemed just to close my eyes.

I came to myself with a start. It had grown quite dark! There were fewer of the Eloi close to me, and their mild, unquestioning eyes seemed to shine at me in the gloom.

I got to my feet in a panic. Fruit husks and flowers fell from my person, where they had been arranged by the playful Eloi. I blundered across the main chamber. It was quite full of Eloi, now, and they slept in little clusters across the metal floor. I emerged at last through the doorway and into the daylight…

Or rather, what little there was left of the day! Peering about wildly, I saw how a last sliver of sun was barely visible — a mere fingernail of light, resting on the western horizon — and to the east, I saw a single bright planet — perhaps it was Venus.

I cried out and lifted my arms to the sky. After all my inner resolve that I should make amends for the impetuous foolishness of the past, here I had dozed through the afternoon, as indolent as you like!

I plunged back to the path I had followed and struck out for the wood. So much for my plans for arriving in the wood during daylight! As the twilight drew in around me, I caught glimpses of gray-white ghosts, barely visible at the edge of my vision. I whirled about at each such apparition, but they fled, staying beyond my reach.

The shapes were Morlocks, of course — the cunning, brutal Morlocks of this History — and they were tracking me with all the silent hunting skills they could command. My earlier resolve that I should not need a weapon for this expedition now began to seem a little foolish, and I told myself that as soon as I reached the wood I should find a fallen branch or some such, to serve me in the office of a club.

[3] In the Darkness

I tripped on the unevenness of the ground several times, and would have twisted my ankles, I think, if it were not for the stiffness of my soldier’s boots.

By the time I came upon the wood, it was full night.

I surveyed that expanse of dank, black forest. The futility of my quest came to me. I remembered how it had seemed to me that a great host of Morlocks had been gathered about me: how was I to find that malevolent handful which would bear away Weena?

I considered plunging into the forest — I remembered, roughly, the way I had gone the first time — and I might come upon my earlier self, with Weena. But the folly of that procedure struck me immediately. For one thing, I had got turned about in my struggles with the Morlocks, and had finished up stumbling about the forest more or less at random. And besides, I had no protection: in the dark enclosure of the forest I should be quite vulnerable. No doubt I should make a satisfying mess of some of them, before they brought me down — but bring me down they surely would; and in any event such a battle was not my intention.

So I retreat, through a quarter-mile or so, until I came upon a hillock which overlooked the wood.

The full darkness gathered about me, and the stars emerged in their glory. As I had done once before, I distracted myself by seeking out signs of the old constellations, but the gradual proper motion of the stars had quite distorted the familiar picture. Still, though, that planet I had noticed earlier shone down on me, as steady as a true companion.

The last time I had studied this altered sky, I remembered, I had had Weena at my side, wrapped up in my jacket for warmth, as we had rested the night while making for the Palace of Green Porcelain. I recalled my feelings then: I had reflected on the littleness of earthly life, compared to the millennial migrations of the stars, and I had been taken, briefly, by an elegiac remoteness — by a view of the grandeur of time, above the level of my earthly troubles.

But now, it seemed to me, I was done with all that. I had had enough of perspective, of Infinities and Eternities; I felt impatient and taut. I was, and always had been, no more than a man, and now I was fully immersed once more in the gritty concerns of Humanity, and only my own projects filled my consciousness.

I dropped my eyes from the remote, unfathomable stars, and down to the woods before me. And now, even as I watched, a gentle, roseate glow began to spread across the south-western horizon. I got to my feet, and did a sort of dance step, such was my sudden elation. Here was confirmation that, after all my adventures, I had finished up on the right day, of all the possible days, here in this remote century! For that glow was a fire in the forest — a fire started, with careless abandon, by myself.

I struggled to remember what had come next on that fateful night — the precise sequence…

The fire I had started had been a quite new and wonderful thing to Weena, and she had wanted to play with its red sheets and flickers; I had been forced to restrain her from throwing her self into that liquid light. Then I picked her up — she had struggled — and I had plunged on into that wood, with the light of my fire illuminating my path.

Soon we had left the glow of those flames, and were proceeding in blackness, broken only by patches of deep blue sky beyond the trees’ stems. It had not been long, in all that oily darkness, before I had heard the pattering of narrow feet, the soft cooing of voices, all around me; I remembered a tug of my coat, and then at my sleeve. I had put Weena down so that I could find my matches, and there was a struggle about my knees, as those Morlocks, like persistent insects, had fallen on her poor body. I got a match lit when its head flared I had seen a row of white Morlock faces, illuminated as if by a flash lamp, all turned up towards me with their red gray eyes — and then, in a second, they had fled.

I had determined to build a new fire and wait for the morning. I had lit camphor and cast it on the ground. I had dragged down dry branches from the trees above, and built a choking fire of green wood…

I raised myself, now, onto the tips of my toes, and cast about over the forest. You must imagine me in all that inky darkness, under a sky without a moon, and the only illumination corning from that spreading fire on the far side of the forest.

There — I had it! — a thread of smoke that curled up into the air, forming a sort of narrow silhouette against the greater blaze behind it. That must be the site at which I had decided to make my stand. It was some distance from me — perhaps two miles to the east, and in the depths of the wood — and, without allowing myself further contemplation, I plunged into the forest.

For some distance I heard nothing but the cracking of twigs under my feet, and a remote, slumberous roar that must have been the voice of the greater fire. The darkness was broken only by the remote glow of the fire, and by patches of deep blue sky overhead; and I could see the boles and roots about me only by silhouette, and I stumbled several times. Then I heard a pattering around me, as soft as rainfall, and I caught that queer, gurgling sound that is the voice of the Morlock. I felt a tug at my shirt-sleeve, a soft pull at my belt, fingers at my neck.

I swung my arms about. I connected with flesh and bone, and my assailants fell back; but I knew my reprieve should not be for long. And, sure enough, within a few seconds that pattering closed up around me again, and I was forced to push on through a sort of hail of touches, of cold pawing and bold, sharp nips, of huge red eyes all around me.

It was a return to my deepest nightmare, to that horrible dark I have dreaded all my life! — But I persisted, and they did not attack me — not outright, at any rate. Already I detected a certain agitation about them — the Morlocks ran about with increasing rapidity — as the glow of that remote blaze grew brighter.

And then, of a sudden, there was a new scent on the air: it was faint, nearly overpowered by the smoke…

It was camphor vapor.

I could be only yards from the place the Morlocks had fallen on me and Weena as we slept — the place where I had fought, and Weena had been lost!

I came upon a great host of Morlocks — a density of them, just visible through the next line of trees. They swarmed over each other like maggots; eager to join the fray or the feast, in a mass such as I did not remember seeing before. I saw a man struggling to rise in their midst. He was obscured by a great weight of Morlocks, and they caught at his neck, hair and arms, and down he went. But then I saw an arm emerge from the melee holding an iron bar — it had been torn from a machine in the Palace of Green Porcelain, I remembered — and he laid about the Morlocks with a vigor. They fell away from him, briefly, and soon he had backed himself up against a tree. His hair stuck out from all around his broad scalp, and he wore, on his feet, only torn and blood-stained socks. The Morlocks, frenetic, came at him again, and he swung his iron bar, and I heard the soft, pulpy crushing of Morlock faces.

For a moment I thought of falling in with him; but I knew it was unnecessary: He would survive, to stumble out of this forest — alone, grieving for Weena and recover his Time Machine from the plotting of the wily Morlocks. I remained in the shadows of the trees, and I am convinced he did not see me…

But Weena was already gone from here, I realized: by this point in the conflict, I had already lost her to the Morlocks!

I whirled about in desperation. Again I had allowed my concentration to lapse. Had I already failed? — had I lost her again?

By this time the panic among the Morlocks at the fire had taken a strong hold, and they fled in a stream away from the blaze, their hunched, hairy backs stained red. Then I saw a leash of Morlocks, four of them, stumbling through the trees, away from the direction of the fire. They were carrying something, I saw now: something still, pale, limp, with a hint of white and gold…

I roared, and I crashed forward through the undergrowth. The Morlocks’ four heads snapped about until their huge, red-gray eyes were fixed on me; and then, my fists raised, I fell on them.

It was not much of a fight. The Morlocks dropped their precious bundle; they faced me, but they were distracted all the time by the growing glow behind them. One little brute got his teeth locked into my wrist, but I pounded at his face, feeling the grinding of bone, and in a few seconds he released me; and the four of them fled.

I bent and scooped up Weena from the ground — the poor mite was as light as a doll — and my heart could have broken at her condition. Her dress was torn and stained, her face and golden hair were smudged with soot and smoke, and I thought she had suffered a burn down one side of her cheek. I noticed, too, the small, pinprick imprints of Morlock teeth in the soft flesh of her neck and upper arms.

She was quite insensible, and I could not tell if she was breathing; I thought she might already be dead.

With Weena cradled in my arms, I ran through the forest.

In the smoky darkness, my vision was obscured; there was the fire which provided a yellow and red glow, but it turned the forest into a place of shadows, shifting and deceiving of the eye. Several times I blundered into trees, or tripped over some hummock; and I am afraid poor Weena got quite thrown about in the course of it.

We were in the midst of a stream of Morlocks, all fleeing the blaze with as much vigor as myself. Their hairy backs shone red in the flames, and their eyes were discs of palpable pain. They stumbled about the forest, clattering into trees and striking at each other with little fists; or else they crawled across the floor, moaning, seeking some illusory relief from the heat and light. When they collided with me, I punched and kicked at them to keep them off; but it was clear enough that, blinded as they were, they could offer me no threat, and after a time I found it was sufficient simply to push them away.

Now that I had grown used to the quiet dignity of Nebogipfel, the bestial nature of these primal Morlocks, with their slack jaws, filthy and tangled hair, and hunched posture — some of them ran with their hands trailing on the ground — was distressing in the extreme.

We came on the edge of the forest abruptly. I stumbled out of the last line of trees, and found myself staggering across a meadow.

I hauled in great breaths of air, and turned to look back at the blazing wood. Smoke billowed up, forming a column which reached over the sky, obscuring the stars; and I saw, from the heart of the forest, huge flames — hundreds of feet tall — which stretched up like buildings. Morlocks continued to flee from the blaze, but in decreasing numbers; and those which emerged from the wood were disheveled and wounded.

I turned, and walked on through long, wiry grass. At first the heat was strong on my back; but after perhaps a mile it had diminished, and the fire’s crimson glare faded to a mere glow. We saw no more Morlocks after that.

I crossed over a hill, and in the valley beyond I came to a place I had visited before. There were acacias here, and a number of sleeping-houses, and a statue — incomplete and broken — which had reminded me of a Faun. I walked down the slope of this valley, and, cradled in its crook, I found a little river I remembered. Its surface, turbulent and broken, reflected the star-light. I settled beside the bank and laid Weena carefully on the ground. The water was cold and fast-running. I tore a strip off my shirt and dabbed it in the water; with this I bathed Weena’s poor face, and trickled a little of the water into her mouth.

Thus, with Weena’s head cradled in my lap, I sat out the rest of that Dark Night.

In the morning I saw him emerge from the burnt forest in a pitiable state. His face was ghastly pale, and he had half-healed cuts on his face, a coat that was dusty and dirty, and a limp worse than a footsore tramp’s with only scorched grass bound up around his bloody feet. I felt a twinge of compassion — or perhaps of embarrassment — to see his wretchedness: had this really been me, I wondered? — had I presented such a spectacle to my friends, on my return, after that first adventure?

Again I had an impulse to offer help; but I knew that no assistance was necessary. My earlier self would sleep off his exhaustion through the brightness of the day, and then, as evening approached, he would return to the White Sphinx to retrieve his Time Machine.

Finally — after one last struggle against the Morlocks — he would be gone, in a whirl of attenuation.

So I stayed with Weena by the river, and nursed her while the sun climbed in the sky, and prayed that she might awaken.