XIII The Trap of the White Sphinx chapter 13 paragraph 12 among 14 paragraphs
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“I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came
towards me. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on
the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little
thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the
box.
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“You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were
close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them
with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. Then
came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight against
their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the
studs over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost got away from me.
As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head—I
could hear the Morlock’s skull ring—to recover it. It was a
nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last scramble.
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“But at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. The clinging
hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found
myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.
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XIV The Further Vision
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“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.
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“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 a steady twilight brooded 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, some time 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 one 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.
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“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking
round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward 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 south-eastward 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
colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the
intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their
south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss
or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual
twilight.
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“The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched
away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan
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.
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“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a
thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting 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 antennæ, like carters’ whips, waving
and feeling, and its stalked 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.
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“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 with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something
threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I
turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab
that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks,
its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared
with an algal 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 sombre
light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
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“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 lichenous 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 green weed and the
red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast
new moon.
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“So I travelled, 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, save 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 north-eastward, the glare
of 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 farther out; but the main expanse of
that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still
unfrozen.
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“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 sandbank
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.
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“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 realised that an 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.
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“The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in 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 bleating 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.
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“A horror of this great darkness came on 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 shoal—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, bigger, and
tentacles trailed down from it; 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.
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XV The Time Traveller’s Return
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“So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon
the machine. The blinking succession 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 recognise our own pretty 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.
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“I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told
you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett
had walked across the room, travelling, 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 Hillyer for a
moment; but he passed like a flash.
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“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 have been a dream.
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“And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east
corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west,
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.
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“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 Pall Mall 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 washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
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XVI After the Story
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“I know,” he said, after a pause, “that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you, but 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?”
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