Chapter 9
`We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.
`While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their
blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass all about
us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was
rather less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare hil -side, there, as
it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches
and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path il uminated through the woods. Yet
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it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to
abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my
head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the
atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for
covering our retreat.
`I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence
of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn,
even when it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical
districts. Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire.
Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but
this rarely results in flame. In this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been
forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an
altogether new and strange thing to Weena.
`She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it
had I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged
boldly before me into the wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking
back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks
the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping
up the grass of the hil . I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me.
It was very black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes
grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead
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it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here
and there. I struck none of my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm
I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.
`For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of
the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-vessels in my
ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The
pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I
had heard in the Under-world. There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they
were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then
something at my arm. And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.
`It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so, and, as I fumbled
with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on
her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little
hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the
match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks
in flight amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared
to light is as soon as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying
clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With a sudden
fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and
flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and
the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of the stir and
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murmur of a great company!
`She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push
on, and then there came a horrible realization. In manoeuvring with my matches and
Weena, I had turned myself about several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in
what direction lay my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of
Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I
determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. I put Weena, stil motionless,
down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began
col ecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the
Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.
`The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms
that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was so blinded by the
light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist.
He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of
camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of
the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week,
no rain had fallen. So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I
began leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire
of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my camphor. Then I turned to
where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but she lay
like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.
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`Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of
a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire would not need
replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The
wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to
nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me.
Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and--it
had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had
happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came
over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the
neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the
darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in a
monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt little teeth nipping
at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave
me strength. I struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar
short, I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of
flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.
`The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon
me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks
pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The
whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices
seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet
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none came within reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope.
What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing.
The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks
about me--three battered at my feet--and then I recognized, with incredulous surprise,
that the others were running, in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me,
and away through the wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but
reddish. As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight
between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood the smell of burning
wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow,
and the Morlocks' flight.
`Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the black pil ars of
the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me.
With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me,
the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection. My
iron bar still gripped, I fol owed in the Morlocks' path. It was a close race. Once the
flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to
strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a
Morlock came blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!
`And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in
that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In
the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this
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was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it,
completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty
or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither
against each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their blindness, and
struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing
one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them
groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured
of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.
`Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a
quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time the flames died down
somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. I was
thinking of beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but
the fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among
them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.
`At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange incredible
company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny noises to each other,
as the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the
sky, and through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged
to another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into
me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.
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`For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit myself and
screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with my hands, and got
up and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I
would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw
Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last,
above the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and
the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim
creatures, came the white light of the day.
`I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that they had
left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it
had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was
almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I
contained myself. The hil ock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From
its summit I could now make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green
Porcelain, and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving
the remnant of these damned souls stil going hither and thither and moaning, as the
day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across smoking
ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the
hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well
as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It
seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the
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sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely
again--terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of
you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
`But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a
discovery. In my trouser pocket were stil some loose matches. The box must have
leaked before it was lost.