The Time Machine Chapter 12

Books at bedtime, the time machine, chapter 12, in the darkness.

We emerged from the palace while the stun was still in part above the horizon. I was determined to reach the white sphinx early the next morning and air the dusk. I proposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as possible that night and then building a fire to sleep in the protection of its glare.

Accordingly, as we went along, I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. They are sloded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated and besides weiner was tired. And I also began to suffer from sleepiness too, so that it was a full night before we reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge weiner would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us, but a singular sense of impending calamity that should indeed have served me as a warning drove me onward.

I had been without sleep for a night and two days and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me and the more locks with it. While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us and the dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was shrub and long grass all about us and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach.

The forest I calculated was rather less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare hillside, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safe arresting place. And I thought that with my matches and my campfire I could contrive to keep my path illuminated with the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood, so rather reluctantly I put it down.

And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat. I don't know if you have ever thought that what a rare thing a flame must be in the absence of a man and in a temperature climate. The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is forced by dew drops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.

Lightning may blast and blacken, but it really gives rise to the widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smolder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In this decadence too, the art of fire making had been forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went looking at my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to ween her.

She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her, but I caught her up and in spite of her struggles plunge boldly before me into the wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could see through the crowded stems that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill.

I laughed at that and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very black and ween her clung to me convulsively, but there was still as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where the gap of a remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there.

I lit none of my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my little one in my right hand I had my iron bar.

For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above and my own breathing and the throb of the blood vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know a pattern behind me. I pushed on grimly, the pattern grew more distinct and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I'd heard in the underworld. There were evidently several of the more locks and they were closing in upon me.

Indeed, in another minute I felt the tug at my coat, then something at my arm and ween us shivered violently and became quite still. It was time for a match, but to get one I must put her down. I did so and as I've fumbled with my pocket a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar queuing sounds from the morelux. Soft little hands too were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.

Then the match scratched and fiddled, I held it flaring and saw the white backs of the morelux in the flight and make the trees. I hastily took a lump of camp from my pocket and prepared to light it as soon as the match would wane. Then I looked at ween her. She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless with her face to the ground.

With a sudden fright I stooped her up. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camp for and flung it to the ground and as it split and flared up and drove back the morelux in the shadows I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of the stir and the murmur of a great company.

She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on and then there came a horrible realization. In manoeuvring with my matches and ween her I had turned myself about several times and now I had not the faintest idea in which direction lay my path. For all I knew I might be facing back towards the palace of Green Porcelain.

I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and an encamp where we were. I put ween her still motionless down upon the turfy bone and then very hastily as my first lump of camp for wane I began collecting sticks and leaves.

Here and there out of the darkness round me the morelux eyes shun like cub uncles. The camp for flickered and went out. I lit a match and as I did so two white forms that had been approaching ween her dashed hastily away. One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist.

He gave a wip of dismay, staggered a little way and fell down. I lit another piece of camp for and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me. For since my arrival on the time machine a matter of a week no rain had fallen.

So instead of casting among about the trees for fallen twigs I began leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks and could economize my camp for then I turned to where ween her labeside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her but she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

Now the smoke of the fire beat over towards me and it must have made me heavy of a sudden.

Moreover the vapor of the camp for was in the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary of the my exertion and sat down. The wood too was full of a slumberous murmur that I did not understand.

I seemed just a nod and opened my eyes but always dark and the moorlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pockets for the matchbox and it had gone. Then they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had happened.

I had slept and my fire had gone out and the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms and pull down. It was incredibly horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me.

I felt, if I was in a monstrous spider's web, I was overpowered and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck, I rolled over and as I did so my hand came upon my eye and lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up shaking the human rats from me and holding the bar short.

I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my bones and for a moment I was free. The strange exaltation that so often seems to a company hard fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weenaw were lost but I determined to make the moorlocks pay for their meat.

I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stair and the cries of them. A minute passed, their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement and their movements grew faster, yet none came within reach. I stood, glaring at the blackness, then suddenly came home.

But if the moorlocks were afraid and close on the heels of that came a strange thing, the darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the moorlocks about me, free battered at my feet and then I recognized with incredulous surprise that the others were running in an incessant stream as it seemed from behind me and away through the woods in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish. As I stood a game, I saw a little red spark go drifting across the gap of starlight between the branches and vanish.

And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumperous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow and the moorlocks of light. Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw through the black pillars of the nearest tree the flames of the burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weenah, but she was gone.

The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as it each fresh tree burst into flames left little time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped. I followed in the moorlocks path. It was a close race.

Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open space. And as I did so, a moorlock came blundering towards me and passed me and went on straight into the fire. And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing I think of all that I beheld in the future age.

The whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock of tumulus, surmounted by a scorched Hawthorne. Beyond this was another rim of the burning forest. With the yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire.

Upon the hillside was some 30 or 40 moorlocks, dazzled by the light and heat and blundering hither and tither against each other until in their bewilderment. At first I did not realise their blindness and struck furiously at them with my bar. And a frenzy of fear as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them, groping under the Hawthorne against the red sky, I heard their moans.

I was assured of that absolute helplessness and misery in the glare and I struck to no more of them. Yet, every now and then, one would come straight towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time the flames died down somewhat and I feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should happen, but the fire burst out again brightly and I stayed my hand.

I walked about the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of weenah. The weenah was gone. At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock and watched this strange and credible company of blind gropings to and fro and making uncanny noises to each other as the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling up rush of smoke steamed across the sky and through the rare tatters of the red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the little stars.

Two or three more locks came blundering into me and I drove them off with blows of my fist, trembling as I did so. For the most part of that night, I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with my hands and got up and sit down again and wandered here and there and again sat down.

Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw more locks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rushed into the flames, but at last above the subsiding red of the fire, above the steaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures came the white light of the day. I searched again for traces of weenah but they were none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest.

I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which she seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out through the haze of smoke, the palace of Greenporsland, and from that I could get my bearings for the white slings.

As so, leaving the remnants of these dams' souls still going hither and tither and moaning, as the day grew clearer. I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across the smoking ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with fire towards the hiding place of the time machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted as well as lame, and I felt the intense wit chidness for the horrible death of little weenah. It seemed an overwhelming calamity.

Now in this old familiar room it is more like the sorrow of a dream than the actual loss, that morning it left me absolutely lonely again, terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this biceye, of some of you, and of such thoughts came a longing that was pain. But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket, we still some loose matches.

The box must have leaked before it was lost.