Chapter 8
`I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then--though I never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.
`The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along
the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I thought, rather
foolishly, that Weena might help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare
idea of writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more
human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human.
`Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we found, instead of
the customary hal , a long gallery lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was
reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of
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miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived,
standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of
a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature
after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skul and the upper bones lay beside it in
the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the
roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton
barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the
side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I
found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must have been air-tight
to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents.
`Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington! Here,
apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it
must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a
time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths
of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work
again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the
shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the
cases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks as I judged. The
place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been
rol ing a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared
about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me.
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`And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age,
that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about
the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.
`To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal
more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be,
even a library! To me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly
more interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay. Exploring, I found
another short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to
minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I
could find no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had
deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking.
As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the best
preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went
on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered. Apparently
this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed
out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been
stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of
departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to
trace the patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been
attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly il -lit,
the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At
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intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--
which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in
my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, al
greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I
have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the
more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only
the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I
should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.
`Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she startled me. Had
it not been for her I do not think I should have noticed that the floor of the gal ery
sloped at all. [Footnote: It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the
museum was built into the side of a hill.-ED.] The end I had come in at was quite
above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the length, the
ground came up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a
London house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly
along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the
gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my
attention. Then I saw that the gal ery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I
hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and
its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by
a number of smal narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the
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Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination
of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and
that I had stil no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then down in
the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd
noises I had heard down the wel .
`I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and turned to a
machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box. Clambering
upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it
sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had
judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain,
and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any
Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very
inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it was
impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to
leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time
Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery and kil ing
the brutes I heard.
`Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into
another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel
hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I
presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped
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to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were
warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been
a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of al ambition. But as
it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour
to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that
I thought chiefly of the PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS and my own seventeen
papers upon physical optics.
`Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a gallery of
technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful discoveries. Except at
one end where the roof had collapsed, this gal ery was well preserved. I went eagerly
to every unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box
of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not even
damp. I turned to Weena. "Dance," I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a
weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict
museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge delight, I solemnly
performed a kind of composite dance, whistling THE LAND OF THE LEAL as
cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest CANCAN, in part a step dance, in part a
skirt-dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally
inventive, as you know.
`Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for
immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet,
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oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a
sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been real y hermetically sealed. I fancied at
first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of
camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had
chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of
a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must
have perished and become fossilized mil ions of years ago. I was about to throw it
away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame--
was, in fact, an excellent candle--and I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives,
however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar
was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gal ery greatly
elated.
`I cannot tell you al the story of that long afternoon. It would require a great effort of
memory to recal my explorations in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery
of rusting stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a
sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the
bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses
of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or
powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred
and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another
place was a vast array of idols--Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every
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country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my
name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took
my fancy.
`As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery after gallery,
dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite,
sometimes fresher. In one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine,
and then by the merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite
cartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I
hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gal ery, I made my essay. I never felt such a
disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never
came. Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their
presence. I real y believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed off
incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my chances of
finding the Time Machine, all together into nonexistence.
`It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the palace. It was
turfed, and had three fruit- trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards
sunset I began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my
inaccessible hiding-place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I
had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of al defences against the
Morlocks--I had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were
needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in
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the open, protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the Time
Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing
knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had
refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other side. They
had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not
altogether inadequate for the work.