The Time Machine Chapter 9

It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from these pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and the things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthy cold to the touch.

Only my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eli, whose disgust of the mollocks I now began to appreciate. The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little disordered. I was oppressed with a perplexity and out.

Once or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night. And weiner was among them and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even then that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter and the nights grow dark.

When the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these white and lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the time machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these mysteries of underground. Yet, I could not face the mystery.

If only I had the companion, it would have been different. But I was so horribly alone and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me. I don't know if you were the understanding of this feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back. It was this restlessness, this insecurity perhaps that drove me farther and farther afield in my exploring expeditions.

Going to the southwestward towards the rising country that is now called Kuhnwood, I observed far off in the direction of the 19th century bancted, a vast green structure, different in character from any I'd had the two seen. It was larger than the largest of places or ruins I knew and the facade had an oriental look, the face of it having the lustre as well as the pale green tint, a kind of bluish green of a certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspects suggested a difference in use and I was minded to push on and explore. But the day was growing late and I had come upon the site of the place after a long, tiring circuit, so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day.

And I returned to the welcome and the careresses of little Weenah. But next morning I perceived clearly enough to enable me to shirt by another day an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and halluminium. Little Weenah ran with me.

He danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and looked downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. Goodbye little Weenah, I said kissing her and then putting her down. I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks, rather hastily I may as well confess for I feared my courage might leak away. At first she watched me in amazement.

Then she gave a most pitious cry and running to me she began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerfed me rather than to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly and in another moment I was in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet and smiled to reassure her.

Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to which I clung. I had to clamber down a sharp of perhaps 200 yards. My descent was affected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well and knees being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself. I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent and not simply fatigued.

One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand and after that experience I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful I went on clambering down the sheer descent with a quick and emotion as possible. Blancing upwards I saw the aperture a small blue disc in which a star was visible while little weeners head showed as a round black projection.

The thirding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything saved that little disc above was profoundly dark and when I looked up again weener had disappeared. I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again and leave the underworld alone.

But even while I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last with intense relief I saw dimly coming up a foot to the right of me, a slender loop hole in the wall swinging myself in. I found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon.

My arms ached, my back was cramped and I was trembling with for the prolonged terror of a form. Besides this the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb of the hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. I do not know how long I lay.

I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and hastily striking one. I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. Living as they did in what appeared to me to be impenetrable darkness their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes and they reflected the light in the same way.

I have no doubt they could see me in the railess obscurity and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But as soon as I struck a match in order to see them they fled in continualntely vanishing into the dark gutters of the tunnel from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion. I tried to call them but the language they had was apparently different from that of the overworld people so that I was needs left to my own unadded efforts and the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, you're in for it now and feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of machinery growing louder.

Presently the walls fell away from me and I came to a large open space and striking another match saw that I'd entered a vast art cavern which stretched into utter darkness beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a match. This is serily my memory is vague, great shapes like big machines rose out of dimness and cast grotesque black shadows in which dims spectral moorlock sheltered from the glare. The place by the by was very stuffy and oppressive and the faint hailettus of the freshly shed blood was in the air.

One way down the central vista was a little table of white metal laid with what seemed a meal. The moorlocks at any rate were carnivorous even at the time. I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct, the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows.

And only waiting for the darkness to come at me again. Then the match burnt down and stung my fingers and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.

I have thought since how particularly ill equipped I was for such an experience. When I had started with the time machine I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke. At times I missed tobacco frightfully, even without enough matches.

If only I had thought of a codec. I could have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second and examined it at leisure. But as it was, I stood there with the only weapons and the powers that nature had endowed me with, hands, feet and teeth, these and four safety matches that still remained to me.

I was afraid to push my way in, among all this machinery in the dark. And it was only with my last glimpse of light. I discovered that my store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economise them.

And I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the overworlders, to whom fire was an novelty. Now, as I say, I had fall left and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lamp fingers, came feeling over my face. And I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me.

I felt the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged and other hands behind me, plucking at my clothes. The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realisation of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could.

They started away and then I could feel them approaching me again. They clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently and shouted again rather discordantly. This time, they were not so seriously alarmed and they made a queer laughing noise as they came back at me.

I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so and eating out the flicker with a scrap of paper for my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered when my light was blown out and in the blackness I could hear the moorlocks rustling like wind among leaves and pattering like the rain as they hurried after me.

In a moment I was clutched by several hands and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scare some imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked, those pale, chinless faces and great, littlest, pinkish grey eyes as they stared in their blindness and bewildered moment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you, I retreated again and when my second match had ended, I struck my third.

It had almost burnt through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks and as I did so my feet were grass from behind and I was violently tugged backward, I lit my last match. And it incontinuently went out, but I had my hand on the climbing bars now and kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the moorlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft while they stayed peering and blinking up at me.

All but one little wretch who followed me for some way and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy. Back climb seemed interminable to me. With the last 20 or 30 feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold.

The last few yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness. Several times my head swam and I felt all the sensations of falling. At last however I got over the well-mouthed somehow and staggered out to the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell full upon my face, even the soil smelled sweet and clean.

Then I remember ween kissing my hands in ears and the voices of others among the Eli. Then for a time I was insensible. [MUSIC]