the thought of darkness, I snatched the lamp back.
I ducked my head under the cupola and leaned over the well’s rim, and was greeted by a blast of warm, moist air into the face — it was like opening the door to a Turkish bath — quite unexpected in that hot but arid night of the future. I had an impression of great depth, and at the remote base of the well I fancied my dark-adapted eyes made out a red glow. Despite its appearance, this really was quite unlike the wells of the first Morlocks. There was no sign of the protruding metal hooks in the side, intended to support climbers, and I still detected no evidence of the machinery noises I had heard before; and I had the odd, unverifiable impression that this well was far deeper than those other Morlocks’ cavern-drilling.
On a whim, I raised my Kodak and dug out the flash lamp. I filled up the trough of the lamp with blitzlichtpulver, lifted the camera and flooded the well with magnesium light. Its reflections dazzled me, and it was a glow so brilliant that it might not have been seen on earth since the covering of the sun, a hundred thousand years or more earlier. That should have scared away the Morlocks if nothing else! — and I began to concoct protective schemes whereby I could connect the flash to the unattended Time Machine, so that the powder would go off if ever the machine was touched.
I stood up and spent some minutes loading the flash lamp and snapping at random across the hill-side around the well. Soon a dense cloud of acrid white smoke from the powder was gathering about me. Perhaps I would be lucky, I reflected, and would capture for the wonderment of Humanity the rump of a fleeing, terrified Morlock!
…There was a scratching, soft and insistent, from a little way around the well rim, not three feet from where I stood.
With a cry, I fumbled at my belt for my poker. Had the Morlocks fallen on me, while I daydreamed?
Poker in hand, I stepped forward with care. The rasping noises were coming from the bed of lichen, I realized; there was some form, moving steady through those tiny, dark plants. There was no Morlock here, so I lowered my club, and bent over the lichen bed. I saw a small, crab-like creature, no wider than my hand; the scratching I heard was the rasp of its single, outsize claw against the lichen. The crab’s case seemed to me to be jet black, and the creature was quite without eyes, like some blind creature of the ocean depths.
So, I reflected as I watched this little drama, the struggle to survive went on, even in this benighted darkness. It struck me that I had seen no signs of life — save for the glimpses of Morlock — away from this well, in all my visit here. I am no biologist, but it seemed clear that the presence of this fount of warm, moist air would be bound to attract life, here on a world turned to desert, just as it had attracted this blind farmer-crab and his crop of lichen. I speculated that the warmth must come from the compressed interior of the earth, whose volcanic heat, evident in our own day, would not have cooled significantly in the intervening six hundred thousand years. And perhaps the moisture came from aquifers, still extant below the ground.
It may be, I mused, the surface of the planet was studded with such wells and cupolas. But their purpose was not to admit access to the interior world of the Morlocks — as in that other History but to release the earth’s intrinsic resources to warm and moisten this planet deprived of its sun; and such life as had survived the monstrous engineering I had witnessed now clustered around these founts of warmth and moisture.
My confidence was increasing — making sense of things is a powerful tonic for my courage, and after that false alarm with the crab, I had no sense of threat — and I sat again on the lip of the well. I had my pipe and some of my tobacco in my pocket, and I packed the bowl full and lit up. I began to speculate on how this History might have diverged from the first I had witnessed. Evidently there had been some parallels — there had been Morlocks and Eloi here — but their grisly duality had been resolved, in ages past.
I wondered why should such a show-down between the races occur — for the Morlocks, in their foul way, were as dependent on the Eloi as were Eloi on Morlock, and the whole arrangement had a sort of stability.
I saw a way it might have come about. The Morlocks were of debased human stock, after all, and it is not in man’s heart to be logical about things. The Morlock must have known that he depended on the Eloi for his very existence; he must have pitied and scorned him — his remote cousin, yet reduced to the status of cattle.
And yet, what a glorious morning made up the brief life of the Eloi! The little people laughed and sang and loved across the surface of the world made into a garden, while your Morlock must toil in the stinking depths of the earth to provide the Eloi with the fabric of their luxurious lives. Granted the Morlock was conditioned for his place in creation, and would no doubt turn in disgust from the Eloi’s sunlight and clear water and fruit, even were it offered to him but still, might he not, in his dim and cunning fashion, have envied the Eloi their
Perhaps the flesh of the Eloi turned sour in the Morlock’s rank mouth, even as he bit into it in his dingy cave.
I envisaged, then, the Morlocks — or a faction of them — arising one night from their tunnels under the earth, and falling on the Eloi with their weapons and whip-muscled arms. There would be a great Culling — and, this time, not a disciplined harvesting of flesh, but a full-blooded assault with one, unthinking purpose: the final extinction of the Eloi.
How must the lawns and food palaces have run with blood, those ancient stones echoing to the childish bleating of the Eloi!
In such a contest there could be only one victor, of course. The fragile people of futurity, with their hectic, consumptive beauty, could never defend themselves against the assaults of organized, murderous Morlocks.
I saw it all — or so I thought! The Morlocks, triumphant at last, had inherited the earth. With no more use for the garden-country of the Eloi, they had allowed it to fall into ruin; they had erupted from the earth and — somehow — brought their own stygian darkness with them to cover the sun! I remembered how Weena’s folk had feared the nights of the new moon — she had called them “the Dark Nights” — now, it seemed to me, the Morlocks had brought about a final Dark Night to cover the earth, forever. The Morlocks had at last murdered the last of earth’s true children, and even murdered earth herself.
Such was my first hypothesis, then: wild, and gaudy — and wrong, in every particular!
…And I became aware, with almost a physical shock, that in the middle of all this historical speculation I had quite forgotten my regular inspections of the abandoned Time Machine.
I got to my feet and glared across the hill-side. I soon picked out the machine’s candle-lit glow — but the lights I had built flickered and wavered, as if opaque shapes were moving around the machine.
They could only be Morlocks!
[6]
My Encounter with the Morlocks
With a spurt of fear — and, I have to acknowledge it, a lust for blood which pulsed in my head — I roared, lifted my poker-club, and pounded back along the path. Careless, I dropped my Kodak; behind me I heard a soft tinkle of breaking glass. For all I know, that camera lies there still — if I may use the phrase — abandoned in the darkness.
As I neared the machine, I saw they were Morlocks all right perhaps a dozen of them, capering around the machine.
They seemed alternately attracted and repelled by my lights, exactly like moths around candles. They were the same ape-like creatures I remembered — perhaps a little smaller — with that long, flaxen hair across their heads and backs, their skin a pasty white, arms long as monkeys’, and with those haunting red-gray eyes. They whooped and jabbered to each other in their queer language. They had not yet touched the Time Machine, I noted with some relief, but I knew it was a matter of moments before those uncanny fingers — ape-like, yet clever as any man’s — reached out for the sparkling brass and nickel.
But there would be no time for
I laid about me with my poker and my fist. The Morlocks jabbered and squealed, and tried to flee. I grabbed one of the creatures as it ran past me, and I felt again the worm-pallor cold of Morlock flesh. Hair like spider-web brushed across the back of my hand, and the animal nipped at my fingers with its small teeth, but I did not yield. I wielded my club, and I felt the soft, moist collapse of flesh and bone.
Those gray-red eyes widened, and closed.
I seemed to watch all this from a small, detached part of my brain. I had quite forgotten all my intentions to return proof of the working of time travel, or even to find Weena: I suspected at that moment that
Then I heard a voice — distinctively Morlock, but quite unlike the others in tone and depth — it issued a single, imperative syllable. I turned, my arms soaked in blood up to the elbows of my jacket, and made ready for more fighting.
Before me, now, stood a Morlock who did not run from me. Though he was naked like the rest, his coat of hair seemed to have been brushed and prepared, so that he had something of the effect of a groomed dog, made to stand upright like a man. I took a massive step forward, my club held firm in both hands.
Calmly, the Morlock raised his right hand — something glinted there — and there was a green flash, and I felt the world tip backwards from under me, pitching me down beside my glowing machine; and I knew no more!
[7]
The Cage of Light
I came to my senses slowly, as if emerging from a deep and untroubled sleep. I was lying on my back, with my eyes closed. I felt so comfortable that for a moment I imagined I must be in my own bed, in my house in Richmond, and that the pink glow showing through my eyelids must be the morning sun seeping around my curtains…
But then I became aware that the surface beneath me — though yielding and quite warm — did not have the softness of a mattress. I could feel no sheets beneath me, nor blankets above me.
Then, in a flash, it returned to me: all of it — my second flight through time, the darkening of the sun, and my encounter with the Morlocks.
Fear flooded me, stiffening my muscles and tightening my stomach. I had been taken by the Morlocks! I snapped my eyes open -
And I was instantly dazzled by a brilliant illumination. It came from a remote disc of intense white light, directly above me. I cried out and flung an arm across my blinded eyes; I rolled over, pressing my face against the floor.
I pushed myself up to a crawling position. The floor was warm and giving, like leather. At first my vision was full of dancing images of that blazing disc, but at last I was able to make out my own shadow under me. And then, still on all fours, I noticed the queerest thing yet: that the surface beneath me was clear, as if made of some flexible glass, and — where my shadow shielded out the light —
I felt queasy to the stomach, but I was able to stand up. I had to shield my eyes with my hand against the unremitting glare from above; I wished I had not lost the hat I had brought from 1891! I still wore my light suit, although it now bore stains of sand and blood, particularly around the sleeves — though some efforts had been made to clean me up, I noticed with surprise, and my hands and arms were clear of Morlock blood, mucus and ichor. My poker was gone, and I could see no sign of my knapsack. I had been left my watch, which hung on a chain from my waistcoat, but my pockets were empty of matches or candles. My pipe and tobacco were gone, too, and I felt an incongruous stab of regret for that — in the middle of all that mystery and peril!
A thought struck me, and my hands flew to my vest pocket — and they found the Time Machine’s twin levers still there. I breathed relief.
I looked around. I was standing on a flat, even Floor of the leather-like, clear substance I have described. I was close to the center of a splash of light perhaps thirty yards wide, cast on that
