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`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 rolling 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.
`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 ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle
from the end at which I entered. At 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, all 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 gallery 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
gallery 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 small narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the
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 still 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 well.
`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 killing
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 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 all 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 gallery 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]