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The Time Machine
Chapter 12. In the Darkness
"We emerged from the Palace while the sun was still partly above the horizon".
I was determined to reach White Sphinx early next morning, and before dusk planned to push through the woods that had stopped me.
My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then build a fire and sleep in the protection of its light.
So, as we moved, I gathered sticks and dried grass, and soon had my arms full of such wood.
Loaded like that, our progress was slower than I had expected, and Weena was tired.
I, too, began to feel very sleepy, so it was full night before we reached the wood.
On the shrubby hill's edge Weena wanted to stop, afraid of the dark ahead, but a strange feeling of danger drove me on.
I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable.
I felt sleep coming on, and the Morlocks with it.
"While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us and dim against them, I saw three figures crouching".
There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I didn't feel safe from their slow approach.
I thought the forest was less than a mile across.
If we could get through it to the bare hillside, that seemed a much safer place to rest.
I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could keep my way lit through the woods.
But if I had to hold matches I would have to leave my firewood, so unwillingly I put it down.
Then it came into my head that I'd amaze our pursuers behind by lighting it.
I was soon to learn the terrible mistake of this plan, but at the time it seemed an ingenious way to cover our retreat.
"I don't know if you have ever thought how rare flame must be where men are gone and in a mild climate".
The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when focused by dewdrops, as happens in hotter places.
Lightning may blast and blacken, but it doesn't often start wide fires.
Decaying plants may sometimes smoulder with heat, but this rarely makes a flame.
In this age, too, the art of making fire had been forgotten on earth.
The red tongues of flame that licked up my heap of wood were a completely new and strange thing to Weena.
"She wanted to run to it and play with it".
I believe she'd have thrown herself into it if I hadn't held her back.
But I caught her up, and despite her struggles, plunged boldly into the wood.
For a little while the fire's light lit the path.
Looking back soon, I could see through the crowded stems that my heap of sticks had set some bushes ablaze.
A curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill.
I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees ahead.
It was black, and Weena clung to me, but as my eyes adjusted there was enough light to avoid the stems.
Overhead it was simply black, except where small gaps of blue sky showed.
I didn't light any matches because I had no free hand.
I carried my little one on my left arm, and held my iron bar in my right.
For a while I heard nothing but the crackle of twigs under my feet, the rustle of the breeze above, my breathing and the throb of blood
Then I thought I heard a pattering behind me, I pushed on grimly.
The pattering grew clearer, and then I caught the same odd sounds and voices I had heard in the Underworld.
There were clearly several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in.
Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm.
And Weena shivered violently and went quite still.
"It was time for a match".
But to get one I had to put her down.
I did so and, as I fumbled in my pocket, a struggle began in the dark around my knees.
It was perfectly silent on her part, with the same strange cooing coming from the Morlocks.
Soft little hands were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.
Then the match scratched and hissed, I held it up, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks flying between the trees.
I quickly took a lump of camphor from my pocket, ready to light it as soon as the match died.
Then I looked at Weena, she was lying, clutching my feet, quite motionless with her face to the ground.
With sudden fear I stooped to her, she hardly seemed to breathe.
I lit the camphor, threw it down, as it split, flared and drove back the Morlocks and shadows, I knelt and lifted her.
The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!
"She seemed to have fainted".
I put her carefully on my shoulder and rose to move on, and then I had a horrible realisation.
In turning with my matches and Weena I had faced about several times, and now I had no idea which way my path lay.
For all I knew, I might be facing back toward the Palace of Green Porcelain.
I found myself in a cold sweat.
I had to think fast what to do.
I decided to build a fire and camp where we were.
I put Weena, motionless, on a turfy bole and, as my first lump of camphor died, began to collect sticks and leaves.
Here and there out of the dark the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.
"The camphor flickered and went out".
I lit a match, and as I did, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed away.
One was so blinded by the light that he came straight at me.
And I felt his bones crack under the blow of my fist.
He gave a cry of dismay, staggered, and fell.
I lit another piece of camphor and went on gathering for my bonfire.
I noticed the foliage above me was dry, for since my arrival in the Time Machine a week earlier no rain had fallen.
So, instead of searching for fallen twigs among the trees, I began to leap up and drag down branches.
Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could save my camphor.
Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace.
I tried all I could to wake her, but she lay like one dead.
I couldn't even tell if she breathed.
"Now the smoke from the fire blew toward me, and it must have made me heavy at once".
Also the vapour of camphor was in the air.
My fire wouldn't need adding to for an hour or so.
I felt very weary after my work, and sat down.
The wood, too, was full of a drowsy murmur I didn't understand.
I seemed just to nod and open my eyes.
But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands on me.
Throwing off their clinging fingers I quickly felt in my pocket for the match-box, and it was gone.
Then they gripped and closed on me again.
In a moment I knew what had happened.
I had slept, my fire had gone out, and the bitter thought of death came over me.
The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood.
I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down.
It was indescribably horrible in the dark to feel all these soft creatures heaped on me.
I felt as if I was in a giant spider's web.
I was overpowered and fell, I felt little teeth nipping at my neck.
I rolled and as I did my hand hit my iron lever, it gave me strength.
I struggled up, shaking the human rats off me, and holding the bar short I struck where I thought their faces might be.
I could feel the soft giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.
"The strange joy that often comes with hard fighting came over me".
I knew that both I and Weena might be lost, but I was determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat.
I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me.
The whole wood was full of their stir and cries.
A minute passed, Their voices rose to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster.
Yet none came within reach, I stood staring into the blackness.
Then suddenly hope came, What if the Morlocks were afraid?
And close on that came a strange thing.
The darkness seemed to grow light, Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me, Three lay beaten at my feet.
Then I realised, with surprised disbelief, that the others were running in a steady stream from behind me and away through the wood in front.
Their backs seemed not white but reddish.
As I stood open mouthed, I saw a little red spark drift across a gap of starlight between the branches and vanish.
Then I understood the smell of burning wood, the drowsy murmur that was growing to a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks' flight.
"Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw through the black pillars of nearer trees the flames of the burning forest".
It was my first fire coming after me.
With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone.
The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time to think.
Iron bar still in my hand, I followed in the Morlocks' path, it was a close race.
Once the flames crept so fast on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike left.
At last I reached a small open space, a Morlock blundered past me and went straight into the fire.
"And now I saw the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all I had seen in that future age".
This whole space was as bright as day with the fire's reflection.
In the centre was a hillock or tumulus with a scorched hawthorn on top.
Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, encircling the space with a fence of fire.
On the hillside were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and stumbling against each other.
At first I didn't realise they were blind, and I struck fiercely at them with my bar in a frenzy of fear.
They came near me, and I killed one and crippled several more.
I saw one groping under the hawthorn against the red sky and heard their moans.
I knew their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more.
"Yet now and then one would come straight toward me, bringing a shaking horror that made me quick to avoid him".
At one time the flames died down a little, and I feared these foul creatures would soon be able to see me.
I thought of starting the fight by killing some of them before that happened, but the fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand.
I walked about the hill among them and avoided them, looking for any sign of Weena, but Weena was gone.
At last I sat atop the hillock and watched this strange group of blind creatures groping and making uncanny sounds under the fire's glare.
Coiling smoke streamed across the sky, and through thin tatters of the red canopy, as if from another world, shone the little stars.
Two or three Morlocks blundered into me, and I drove them off with my fists, trembling as I did.
"For most of that night I was sure it was a nightmare".
I bit myself and screamed, wanting to wake.
I beat the ground with my hands, and rose and sat down again, and wandered here and there and then sat down.
Then I'd rub my eyes and call on God to let me wake.
Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames.
But at last the white light of day came.
It rose above the dying red fire, streaming black smoke, whitening and blackening stumps, and the dwindling number of those dim creatures.
"I searched again for signs of Weena, but found none".
It was clear they had left her poor little body in the forest.
I can't say how much it relieved me to think it had escaped the awful fate it seemed to face.
As I thought of that, I was almost moved to start a slaughter of the helpless abominations around me, but I stopped myself.
The hillock, as I said, was like an island in the forest.
From its top I could make out the Palace of Green Porcelain through smoke, and so find the direction of the White Sphinx.
So, leaving the last of these damned souls still going about and moaning, I tied some grass about my feet as the day cleared.
I limped across smoking ashes and among black stems that still glowed with fire toward the hiding place of the Time Machine.
I walked slowly, for I was nearly exhausted and lame, and I felt the deepest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena.
To me, at that moment, it seemed an overwhelming, almost unbearable disaster.
Now, in this old familiar room, it feels more like the sorrow of a dream than a real loss.
But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again, terribly alone.
I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
"But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I found something."
"In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches."
"The box must have leaked before it was lost."