 CHAPTER XI of THE TIME MACHINE I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling, and this time I was not seated properly in the saddle but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch, into futurity. As I drove on a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things, the palpitating greyness grew darker, then, though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last the steady twilight booted over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared, for the sun had ceased to set. It simply rose and fell in the west and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars growing slower and slower had given place to creeping points of light. At last, sometime before I stopped, the sun red and very large halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands ones seemed motionless, and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible. I stopped very gently and sat upon the time machine looking round. The sky was no longer blue, northeastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and southeastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet, where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish color, and all the trace of light that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their southeastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen and caves, plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight. The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the southwest to rise into a bright horizon against the warm sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt, pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now. Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly ghost glanting and fluttering up into the sky and circling disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae like carters whips, waving and feeling, and its stocked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front. Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved. As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away, but in a moment it returned and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this and caught something thread-like. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm I turned and saw that I had grasped the antennae of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks and its mouth was all alive with appetite and its vast ungainly claws smeared with an eligible slime were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there in the somber light among the fully aided sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world, the red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt dead sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous looking green of the likeness plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs, all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years and there was the same red sun, a little larger, a little duller, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the greenweed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon. So I traveled stopping ever and again in great strides of a thousand years or more drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last more than thirty million years hence the huge red hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared and the red beach, gave for its livid green liverworts and lichens seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the northeastward the glare of the snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin with drifting masses further out but the main expanse of that salt ocean all bloody under the eternal sunset was still unfrozen. I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sand bank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank but it became motionless as I looked at it. And I judged that my eye had been deceived and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little. Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed. That a concavity a bay had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day and then I realized that the eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally at first I took it to be the moon but there is much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth. The darkness grew apace. A cold wind began to blow and freshening gusts from the east and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleeding of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives. All that was over. As the darkness thickened the eddying flakes grew more abundant dancing before my eyes and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black. A horror of this great darkness came upon me. The cold that smote to my marrow and the pain I felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered and a deadly nausea seized me. Then, like a red hot bow in the sky, appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shore. There was no mistake now that it was a moving thing against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps. Or it may be beaker and tentacles trailed down from it and it seemed black against the weltering blood red water and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle. The time machine by H. G. Wells Chapter 12 So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking secession of the days and nights was resumed. The sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These too changed and passed, and others came. Presently when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize our petty and familiar architecture. The thousands hand ran back to the starting point. The night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently now I slowed the mechanism down. I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that when I set out before my velocity came very high, Mrs. Wachit had walked across the room traveling as it seemed to me like a rocket. As I returned I passed again, across that minute when she traversed the laboratory, but now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillier for a moment, but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the machine and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools, my appliances, just as I had left them. I got off the thing very shakily and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again exactly as it had been. I might have slept there and the whole thing had been a dream. And yet not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner of the laboratory, yet it had come to rest again in the northwest against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the Morlocks had carried my machine. For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through the passage here, limping because my heel was still painful and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Paul Maul Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed today and looking at the timepiece saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened the door on you. You know the rest. I watched and dined and now I am telling you the story. I know, he said after a pause, that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here tonight in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No, I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest and taking it as a story. What do you think of it? He took up his pipe and began in his old accustomed manner to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the great. There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the time travelers face and looked round at his audience. They were in the dark and little spots of color swarmed before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar. The sixth, the journalist fumbled for his watch. The others as far as I remember were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What a pity it is you're not a writer of stories. He said, putting his hand on the time traveler's shoulder. You don't believe it? Well, I thought not. The time traveler turned to us. Where are the matches? He said. He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. To tell you the truth, I hardly believe it myself. And yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned over, the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-heeled scars on his knuckles. The medical man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. The gynecium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned forward to see holding out his hand for a specimen. I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one, said the journalist. How shall we get home? Plenty of calves at the station, said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man, but I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly, certainly not. Where did you really get them? said the medical man. The time traveler put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. They were put into my pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He stared round the room. I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a time machine or a model of a time machine, or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times, but I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And where did the dream come from? I must look at that machine if there is one. He caught up the lamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red through the door into the corridor. We followed him. Where in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine? Sure enough, squat, ugly, and a skew. A thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent, glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch, for I put up my hand and felt the rail of it, and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down on the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail. It's all right now, he said. The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the cold. He took up the lamp and in an absolute silence we returned to the smoking room. He came into the hall with us and helped the editor on with his coat. The medical man looked into his face and with a certain hesitation told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway bawling good night. I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the tale a gaudy lie. For my own part I was unable to come up with a conclusion. The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go next day and see the time traveler again. I was told he was in the laboratory and, being on easy terms in the house, I went up to see him. The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the time machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the squat's substantial-looking mass swayed like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met me in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy, he said, with that thing in there. But is it not some hoax? I said, Do you really travel through time? Really, and truly, I do. And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated. As I wandered about the room. I only want half an hour, he said. I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time traveling, up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending, then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper. What was he going to do before lunchtime? Then suddenly I was reminded, by an advertisement, that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch and saw that I could barely save the engagement. I got up and went down the passage to tell the time traveler. As I took hold of the handle of the door, I heard, an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the door. The time traveler was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment, a figure so transparent that the bench behind, with his sheets of drawings, was absolutely distinct, but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The time machine had gone. Say, for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A pain of the skylight had apparently just been blown in. I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. As I stood staring the door into the garden opened and the man-servant appeared. We looked at each other. The ideas began to come. Has Mr. gone out that way? Said I. No, sir, no one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here. At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting for the time traveler, waiting for the second, perhaps still a stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The time traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody knows now, he has never returned. Epilogue. One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past and fell among the blood-drinking hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea or among the grotesque Sarians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic Times. He may even now, if I may use the phrase, be wandering on some Plesiosaurus haunted eulitic coral reef or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward into one of the nearer ages in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its weirsome problem solved? Into the manhood of the race for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time. I say for my own part. He I know, for the question had been discussed among us long before the time machine was made, thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only foolish heap that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me, the future is still black and blank, is a vast ignorance lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me for my comfort two strange white flowers shriveled now and browned and flat and brittle to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man. End of chapter 12. Recording by Aaron Elliott, St. Louis, Missouri. End of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.