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|
 'I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it |
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| about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges |
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| of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green |
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| facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It |
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| lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward |
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| before I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary, or |
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| even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once |
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| have been. I thought then—though I never followed up the |
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| thought—of what might have happened, or might be happening, to |
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| the living things in the sea. |
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| 'Within the big valves of the door—which were open and |
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| broken—we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery |
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| lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of |
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| a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable |
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| array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey |
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| covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the |
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| centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge |
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| skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some |
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| extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull |
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| and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one |
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| place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, |
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| the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was |
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| the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis |
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| was confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared to be |
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| sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the |
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| old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must have |
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| been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of |
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| their contents. |
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| 'Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South |
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| Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, |
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| and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though |
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| the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a |
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| time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost |
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| ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with |
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| extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all |
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| its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little |
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| people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded |
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| in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been |
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| bodily removed—by the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very |
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| silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had |
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| been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, |
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| presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my |
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| hand and stood beside me. |
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| 'To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green |
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| Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of |
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| Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a |
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| library! To me, at least in my present circumstances, these |
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| would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of oldtime |
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| geology in decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery |
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| running transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted |
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| to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind |
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| running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpeter; indeed, no |
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| nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. |
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| Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. |
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| As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the |
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| whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had little |
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| interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a |
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| very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had |
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| entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural |
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| history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. |
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| A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been |
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| stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held |
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| spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was |
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| sorry for that, because I should have been glad to trace the |
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| patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had |
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| been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal |
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| proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running |
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| downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At |
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| intervals white globes hung from the ceiling—many of them |
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| cracked and smashed—which suggested that originally the place |
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| had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my element, for |
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| rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, |
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| all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly |
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| complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I |
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| was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most |
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| part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the |
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| vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could |
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| solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers |
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| that might be of use against the Morlocks. |
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| 'Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that |
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| she startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should |
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| have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. |
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| [Footnote: It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, |
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| but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.-ED.] The |
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| end I had come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare |
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| slit-like windows. As you went down the length, the ground came |
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| up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the |
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| "area" of a London house before each, and only a narrow line of |
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| daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the |
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| machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the gradual |
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| diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions |
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| drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last |
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| into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round |
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| me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less |
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| even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken |
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| by a number of small narrow footprints. My sense of the |
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| immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that |
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| I was wasting my time in the academic examination of machinery. |
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| I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the |
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| afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no |
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| means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of |
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| the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises |
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| I had heard down the well. |
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| 'I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left |
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| her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not |
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| unlike those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and |
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| grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it |
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| sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began |
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| to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty |
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| correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and I rejoined |
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| her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for |
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| any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to |
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| kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go |
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| killing one's own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, |
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| to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to |
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| leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst |
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| for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going |
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| straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard. |
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| 'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of |
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| that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the |
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| first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered |
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| flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of |
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| it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. |
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| They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of |
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| print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and |
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| cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I |
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| been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the |
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| futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck |
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| me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which |
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| this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I |
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| will confess that I thought chiefly of the PHILOSOPHICAL |
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| TRANSACTIONS and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics. |
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| 'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once |
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| have been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a |
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| little hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the |
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| roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went |
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| eagerly to every unbroken case. And at last, in one of the |
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| really air-tight cases, I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I |
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| tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not even damp. |
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| I turned to Weena. "Dance," I cried to her in her own tongue. |
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| For now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we |
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| feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft |
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| carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge delight, I solemnly performed |
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| a kind of composite dance, whistling THE LAND OF THE LEAL as |
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| cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest CANCAN, in part |
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| a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far as my tail-coat |
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| permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally inventive, |
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| as you know. |
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| 'Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have |
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| escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, |
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| as for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I |
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| found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found |
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| it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really |
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| hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that it was paraffin |
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| wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of camphor |
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| was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance |
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| had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of |
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| centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen |
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| done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished |
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| and become fossilized millions of years ago. I was about to |
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| throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and |
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| burned with a good bright flame—was, in fact, an excellent |
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| candle—and I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives, |
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| however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet |
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| my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. |
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| Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated. |
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| 'I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It |
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| would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations |
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| in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting |
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| stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a |
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| hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar |
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| of iron promised best against the bronze gates. There were |
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| numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of |
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| rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. |
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| But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted |
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| into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, |
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| I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place |
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| was a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, |
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| Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, |
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| yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the |
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| nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly |
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| took my fancy. |
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| 'As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through |
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| gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits |
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| sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In |
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| one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, |
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| and then by the merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight |
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| case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed |
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| the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, |
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| selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt |
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| such a disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen |
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| minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course the things |
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| were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I |
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| really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed |
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| off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it |
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| proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into |
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| nonexistence. |
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| 'It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open |
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| court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit- |
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| trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I |
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|
| began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us, and |
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| my inaccessible hiding-place had still to be found. But that |
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| troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a thing that |
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| was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks—I |
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| had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze |
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| were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do |
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|
| would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In |
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|
| the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards |
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| that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing |
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| knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. |
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|
| Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of |
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| the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as |
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| being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not |
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| altogether inadequate for the work. |
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|
