Chapter 7
`Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon.
`The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon.
Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the
Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming
Dark Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer
interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason
of the fear of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul
vil ainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now
that my second hypothesis was al wrong. The Upper-world people might once have
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been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that
had long since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of
man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new
relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful
futility. They stil possessed the earth on sufferance: since the Morlocks, subterranean
for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface intolerable.
And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their
habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a
standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because
ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. But, clearly, the
old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was
creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his
brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back
changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were
becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head the
memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world. It seemed odd how it floated into
my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in
almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a vague sense
of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the time.
`Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was
differently constituted. I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human
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race, when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would
defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness
where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with
some of that confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay
exposed. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I
shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me.
`I wandered during the afternoon along the val ey of the Thames, but found nothing
that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed
easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wel s,
must be. Then the tal pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished
gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a
child upon my shoulder, I went up the hil s towards the south-west. The distance, I had
reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first
seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. In
addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through the
sole--they were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors--so that I was lame. And it
was already long past sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black
against the pale yellow of the sky.
`Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she
desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off
on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled
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Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for
floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose. And that reminds me! In
changing my jacket I found . . .'
The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two
withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the little table. Then he
resumed his narrative.
`As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest
towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey
stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her,
and contrived to make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her
Fear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the
breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that
evening stil ness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars
far down in the sunset. Wel , that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In
that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could
even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see
through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the
dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows
as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine?
`So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The clear blue of the
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distance faded, and one star after another came out. The ground grew dim and the
trees black. Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and
talked to her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms
round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder.
So we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked
into a little river. This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a
number of sleeping houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure, MINUS the
head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet
early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come.
`From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before
me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either to the right or the left. Feeling
tired--my feet, in particular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from my
shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of
Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the
wood and thought of what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one
would be out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger--a danger I
did not care to let my imagination loose upon--there would stil be al the roots to
stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against.
`I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not
face it, but would pass the night upon the open hil .
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`Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and
sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hill-side was quiet and deserted, but
from the black of the wood there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me
shone the stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in
their twinkling. Al the old constel ations had gone from the sky, however: that slow
movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since
rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still
the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a
very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own
green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone
kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.
`Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of
terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of
their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the
great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that
silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these
few revolutions al the activity, al the traditions, the complex organizations, the
nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew
him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who had
forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror. Then I
thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species, and for the first time, with
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a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet
it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and
starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.
`Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled
away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the old constellations in the new
confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at
times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the
reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white.
And close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first,
and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had
seen none upon the hil that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it almost
seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my foot with
the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel; so I sat down again,
took off my shoes, and flung them away.
`I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant
instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We
soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though
there was no such thing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the
meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my
heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time
in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had
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lived on rats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and
exclusive in his food than he was--far less than any monkey. His prejudice against
human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men----! I tried
to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more
remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. And the
intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone. Why should
I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks
preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena
dancing at my side!
`Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by
regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to
live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his
watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I
even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of
mind was impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept
too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a
sharer in their degradation and their Fear.
`I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to
secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as
I could contrive. That necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure
some means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I
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knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some
contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a
battering ram. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of
light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine
the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring
with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our
way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.