up immediately with a collection of creatures: burrowing bivalves, gastropods, and what looked like oysters. There seemed to be a small variety of species, but there was evidently a high abundance of specimens in this fertile Sea.
There at the fringe of that ocean, with the gurgling water lapping about my toes and fingers, and with the sun warm on my neck, a great feeling of peace descended on me. As a child I had been taken for day-trips by my parents to Lympne and Dungeness, and I would walk to the edge of the Sea — just as I had today — and imagine I was alone in the world. But now, it was nearly true! It was remarkable to think that no ships sailed this new ocean, anywhere in the world; that there were no cities of men on the other side of the jungle behind me — indeed, the only flickers of intelligence on the planet were myself, and the poor, wounded Morlock. But it was not a forbidding prospect — not a bit of it — not after the awful darkness and chaos of 1938, which I had so recently escaped.
I straightened up. The Sea was charming, but we could not drink salt water! I took careful note of the point at which I had emerged from the jungle — I had no wish to lose Nebogipfel in that arboreal gloom — and I struck barefoot out along the water’s edge, away from the family of
After perhaps a mile, I came to a brook which bubbled out of the forest, and came trickling down the beach to the Sea. When I tested this, I found it to be fresh water, and it seemed quite clear. I felt a great access of relief: at least we should not die today! I dropped to my knees and plunged my head and neck in the cool, bubbling stuff. I drank down great gulps, and then took off my jacket and shirt and bathed my head and neck. Crusted blood, stained brown by exposure to the air, swirled away towards the Sea; and when I straightened up I felt much refreshed.
Now I faced the challenge of how to transport this bounty to Nebogipfel. I needed a cup, or some other container.
I spent some minutes sitting by the side of that stream, peering about in a baffled fashion. All my ingenuity seemed to have been exhausted by my latest tumble through time, and this final puzzle was one step too far for my tired brain.
In the end, I took my boots from my belt, rinsed them out as well as I could, and filled them up with stream water; then I transported them back along the beach and through the forest, to the waiting Morlock. As I bathed Nebogipfel’s battered face, and tried to rouse him to drink, I promised myself that the next day I should find something rather more suitable than an old boot to use as a dinner service.
Nebogipfel’s right leg had been mangled by the assault of the
During my clumsy manipulations — I am no medical man — the Morlock, still unconscious, grunted and mewled with pain, like a cat.
Having cleaned the wounds, I ran my hands along the leg, but could detect no obvious break in the shin or calf bones. As I had noted before, the main damage seemed to be in the knee and ankle areas, and I registered this with dismay, for, while I might have been able to set a broken tibia by touch, I could see no way I could treat such damage as Nebogipfel had sustained. Still, I rummaged through the wreckage of our car until I had found two straight sections of framework. I took my improvised knife to my jacket — I did not anticipate the garment being terribly useful in such a climate as this — and produced a set of bandages, which I washed off.
Then, taking my courage in my hands, I straightened out the Morlock’s leg and foot. I bound his leg tight to the splints, strapping it for support against the other, uninjured leg.
The Morlock’s screams, echoing from the trees, were terrible to hear.
Exhausted, I dined that night on oysters — raw, for I had no strength to construct a fire — and I propped myself up, close to the Morlock, with my back against a tree trunk and Moses’s wrench in my hand.
[3]
How We Lived
I established a camp on the shore of my Palaeocene Sea, close to that fresh-water brook I had found. I decided we should be healthier, and safer from attack, there rather than in the gloom of the forest. I set up a sunshade for Nebogipfel, using bits of the Time-Car with items of clothing stretched over them.
I carried Nebogipfel to this site in my arms. He was as light as a child, and still only half conscious; he looked up at me, helpless, through the ruins of his goggles, and it was hard for me to remember that he was a representative of a species which had crossed space, and tamed the sun!
My next priority was fire. The available wood — fallen branches and so forth — was moist and moldy, and I took to carrying it out to the edge of the beach, to allow it to dry. With some fallen leaves to act as kindling, and a spark from a stone beaten against Time-Car metal, I was able to ignite a flame readily enough. At first I went through the ritual of restarting the fire daily, but soon discovered the doubtless ancient trick of keeping coals glowing in the fire’s pit during the day, with which it was a simple matter to re-ignite the blaze as required.
Nebogipfel’s convalescence progressed slowly. Enforced unconsciousness, to a member of a species who do not know sleep, is a grave and disturbing thing, and on his revival he sat in the shade for some days, passive and unwilling to talk. But he proved able to eat the oysters and bivalves I fetched up from the Sea, albeit with a deep reluctance. In time I was able to vary our diet with the cooked flesh of turtle — for that creature was quite abundant, all along the shore. After some practice, I succeeded in bringing down clusters of the fruits of the shoreline palm trees by hurling lumps of metal and rocks high into the branches. The nuts proved very useful: their milk and flesh varied our diet; their empty shells served as containers for a variety of purposes; and even the brown fibers which clung to the shells were capable of being woven into a crude cloth. However, I have no great facility for such fine work, and I never got much further than making myself a cap — a broad-brimmed affair, like a coolie’s.
Still, despite the munificence of the Sea and the palms, our diet was monotonous. I looked with envy at the succulent little creatures which clambered, out of my reach, through the branches of the trees above me.
I explored the shore of the Sea. Many types of creature inhabited that oceanic world. I observed wide, diamond-shaped shadows skimming the surface, which I believe were rays; and twice I saw upright fins — beating with purpose through the water, at least a foot high — which could only be the signs of huge sharks.
I spotted an undulating form, cruising through the surface of the water perhaps a half mile from land. I made out a wide, hinged jaw, inset with small, cruel teeth, and white flesh behind. This beast was perhaps five feet long, swimming by means of undulations of its sinuous body. I reported this sighting to Nebogipfel, who — retrieving a little more of that encyclopedic body of data stored in his little skull — identified it as
Nebogipfel told me that in this period, the ocean-going mammals of my century whales, sea-cows and so forth — were in the midst of their evolutionary adaptation to the Sea, and lived still as large, slow-moving land animals. I kept a wary eye out for a basking land-whale, for surely I should be able to hunt down such a slow-moving animal — but I never saw one.
When I removed Nebogipfel’s splints for the first time, the broken flesh showed itself to be healing. Nebogipfel probed at his joints, however, and pronounced that they had been set incorrectly. I was not surprised, but neither of us could think of a way to improve the situation. Still, after some time, Nebogipfel was able to walk, after a fashion, by using a crutch made of a shaped branch, and he took to hobbling about our little encampment like some desiccated wizard.
His eye, however — which I had ruined with my assault in the Time-Car workshop — did not recover, and remained without sight, to my deep regret and shame.
Being a Morlock, poor Nebogipfel was far from comfortable in the intensity of the daytime sun. So he took to sleeping through the day, within the shelter I constructed, and moving about during the hours of darkness. I stuck to the daylight, and so each of us spent most of his waking hours alone. We met and talked at twilight and dawn, although I have to admit that after a few weeks of open air, heat and hard physical labor, I was pretty much spent by the time the sun fell.
The palms had broad fronds, and I determined to retrieve some of these, intent on using them to construct a better shelter. But all my efforts at hurling artifacts up into the trees were of no avail at fetching down the fronds, and I had no means of cutting down the palms themselves. So I was forced to resort to stripping down to my trousers and shinning up the trees like a monkey. Once at the crown of a tree, it was the work of moments to strip the fronds from the trunk and hurl them to the ground. I found those climbs exhausting. In the fresh sea air and sunshine, I was growing healthier and more robust; but I am not a young man, and I soon found a limit to my athletic ability.
With the retrieved fronds I constructed us a more substantial shelter, of fallen branches roofed over by plaited fronds. I made a wide hat of fronds for Nebogipfel. When he sat in the shade with this affair tied under his chin, and otherwise naked, he looked absurd.
As for me, I have always been pale of complexion, and after the first few days I suffered greatly from my exposure to the sun, and I learned caution. The skin peeled from my back, arms and nose. I grew a thick beard to protect my face, but my lips blistered in a most unsightly fashion — and the worst of it was the intense burning of the bald patch at my crown. I took to bathing my burns, and to wearing my hat and what remained of my shirt at all times.
One day, after perhaps a month of this, while I was shaving (using bits of Time-Car as blade and mirror), I realized, suddenly, how much I had changed. My teeth and eyes shone, brilliant white, from a mahogany-brown face, my stomach was as flat as it had been during my College days, and I walked about in a palm frond hat, cut-off trousers, and barefoot, as naturally as if I had been born to it.
I turned to Nebogipfel. “Look at me! My friends would barely recognize me — I’m becoming an aboriginal.”
His chinless face showed no expression. “You
Nebogipfel insisted that we retrieve the components of our smashed Time-Car from the forest. I could see the logic of this, for I knew that in the days to come we should need every scrap of raw materials, particularly metals. So we salvaged the car, and assembled the remnants in a pit in the sand. When the more urgent of our survival needs were satisfied, Nebogipfel took to spending a great deal of time with this wreckage. I did not inquire too closely at first, supposing that he was constructing some addition to our shelter, or perhaps a hunting weapon.
One morning, however, after he had fallen asleep, I studied his project. He had reconstructed the frame of the Time-Car; he had laid out the shattered floor section, and built up a cage of rods around it, tied together with bits of wire salvaged from the steering column. He had even found that blue toggle switch which had closed the Plattnerite circuit.
When he next woke, I confronted him. “You’re trying to build a new Time Machine, aren’t you?”
He dug his small teeth into palm-nut flesh. “No. I am
“Your intention is obvious. You have remade the frame which bore the essential Plattnerite circuit.”
“As you say, that is obvious.”
“But it’s futile, man!” I looked down at my callused and bleeding hands, and found myself resenting this diversion of his effort, while
“If we build a Time Machine,” he said, “we may not be able to escape from this Age. But if we do not build one, we certainly will not be able to escape.”
I growled. “Nebogipfel, I think you should face facts. We are stranded, here in deep time. We will never find Plattnerite here, as it is not a naturally occurring substance. We can’t make it, and no one will bring a sample to us, for no one has the faintest inkling that we are within ten million years of this era!”
For reply, he licked at the succulent meat of his palm-nut.
