Chapter 6
`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 those pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to appreciate.
`The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little disordered. I was
oppressed with perplexity and doubt. 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 Weena 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 whitened 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
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inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by
boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If
only I had had a 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 will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.
`It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further
afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the south-westward towards the rising
country that is now cal ed Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of
nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any I
had hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces 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
aspect 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 sight of the place after a long and
tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the fol owing day, and I
returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I
perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain
was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, 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
aluminium.
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`Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me
lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. "Good-
bye, Little Weena," 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 piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. I
think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little
roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat of the wel . 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 shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was
effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these
being adapted to the needs of a creature much smal er 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 as quick a motion as possible. Glancing
upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little
Weena's head showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine
below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was
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profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.
`I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again,
and leave the Under-world 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 loophole 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 the prolonged
terror of a fal . Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon
my eyes. The air was full of the throb and 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 impenetrable
darkness, their eyes were abnormal y 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 that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me
apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled
incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at
me in the strangest fashion.
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`I tried to cal to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of
the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the
thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself,
"You are in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of
machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fel away from me, and I came to a large
open space, and striking another match, saw that I had entered a vast arched 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.
`Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the
dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered
from the glare. The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint
halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a
little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks 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 al 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 burned down, and
stung my fingers, and fel , 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 al their
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appliances. I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke--at
times I missed tobacco frightful y--even without enough matches. If only I had thought
of a Kodak! 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 only the weapons and the
powers that Nature had endowed me with--hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four
safety-matches that stil 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 economize them,
and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire
was a novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand
touched mine, lank 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 clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures
examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realization 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
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back at me. I wil confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another
match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker
with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel.
But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the blackness I
could hear the Morlocks 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 scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless
faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their blindness and
bewilderment. 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 burned 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 grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged backward. I lit
my last match . . . and it incontinently went out. But I had my hand on the climbing
bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the Morlocks
and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up
at me: al but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and wellnigh secured
my boot as a trophy.
`That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly
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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 al the sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow,
and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face. Even the
soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and
the voices of others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.