The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (read online)

The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells [1898]

I

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully
free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this
way–marking the points with a lean forefinger–as we sat and lazily
admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it)
and his fecundity.

‘You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for
instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.’

‘Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?’ said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

‘I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable
ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You
know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil,
has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a
mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.’

‘That is all right,’ said the Psychologist.

‘Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.’

‘There I object,’ said Filby. ‘Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things–‘

‘So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous
cube exist?’

‘Don’t follow you,’ said Filby.

‘Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
existence?’

Filby became pensive. ‘Clearly,’ the Time Traveller proceeded, ‘any
real body must have extension in four directions: it must have
Length, Breadth, Thickness, and–Duration. But through a natural
infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions,
three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.
There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between
the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that
our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the
latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.’

‘That,’ said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight
his cigar over the lamp; ‘that … very clear indeed.’

‘Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,’
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of
cheerfulness. ‘Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension,
though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know
they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There isno difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Spaceexcept that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish
people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all
heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?’

‘I have not,’ said the Provincial Mayor.

‘It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to
three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some
philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions
particularly–why not another direction at right angles to the other
three?–and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry.
Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York
Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat
surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of
a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models
of three dimensions they could represent one of four–if they could
master the perspective of the thing. See?’

‘I think so,’ murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his
brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one
who repeats mystic words. ‘Yes, I think I see it now,’ he said after
some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

‘Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this
geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results
are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight
years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at
twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it
were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned
being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

‘Scientific people,’ proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, ‘know very well that
Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram,
a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the
movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night
it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to
here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the
dimensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced
such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along
the Time-Dimension.’

‘But,’ said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, ‘if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why
has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot
we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?’

The Time Traveller smiled. ‘Are you sure we can move freely in
Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two
dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.’

‘Not exactly,’ said the Medical Man. ‘There are balloons.’

‘But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical
movement.’

‘Still they could move a little up and down,’ said the Medical Man.

‘Easier, far easier down than up.’

‘And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
present moment.’

‘My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where
the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the
present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have
no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down
if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.’

‘But the great difficulty is this,’ interrupted the Psychologist.
‘You can move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot
move about in Time.’

‘That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say
that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling
an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence:
I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of
course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any
more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the
ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this
respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why
should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or
accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about
and travel the other way?’

‘Oh, this,’ began Filby, ‘is all–‘

‘Why not?’ said the Time Traveller.

‘It’s against reason,’ said Filby.

‘What reason?’ said the Time Traveller.

‘You can show black is white by argument,’ said Filby, ‘but you will
never convince me.’

‘Possibly not,’ said the Time Traveller. ‘But now you begin to see
the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four
Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine–‘

‘To travel through Time!’ exclaimed the Very Young Man.

‘That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time,
as the driver determines.’

Filby contented himself with laughter.

‘But I have experimental verification,’ said the Time Traveller.

‘It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,’ the
Psychologist suggested. ‘One might travel back and verify the
accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!’

‘Don’t you think you would attract attention?’ said the Medical Man.
‘Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.’

‘One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,’
the Very Young Man thought.

‘In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go.
The German scholars have improved Greek so much.’

‘Then there is the future,’ said the Very Young Man. ‘Just think!
One might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at
interest, and hurry on ahead!’

‘To discover a society,’ said I, ‘erected on a strictly communistic
basis.’

‘Of all the wild extravagant theories!’ began the Psychologist.

‘Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until–‘

‘Experimental verification!’ cried I. ‘You are going to verify
that?’

‘The experiment!’ cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

‘Let’s see your experiment anyhow,’ said the Psychologist, ‘though
it’s all humbug, you know.’

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly,
and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly
out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long
passage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. ‘I wonder what he’s got?’

‘Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,’ said the Medical Man, and
Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but
before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and
Filby’s anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering
metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very
delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent
crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that
follows–unless his explanation is to be accepted–is an absolutely
unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that
were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with
two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism.
Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the
table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon
the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that
the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair
nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between
the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking
over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched
him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left. The
Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the
alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however
subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played
upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. ‘Well?’
said the Psychologist.

‘This little affair,’ said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows
upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus,
‘is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through
time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there
is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in
some way unreal.’ He pointed to the part with his finger. ‘Also,
here is one little white lever, and here is another.’

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
‘It’s beautifully made,’ he said.

‘It took two years to make,’ retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when
we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: ‘Now I
want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over,
sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.
Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will
go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a
good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy
yourselves there is no trickery. I don’t want to waste this model,
and then be told I’m a quack.’

There was a minute’s pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. ‘No,’ he said suddenly. ‘Lend me your
hand.’ And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual’s
hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it
was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine
on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am
absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of
wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel
was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became
indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of
faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone–vanished! Save
for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked
under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.
‘Well?’ he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then,
getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his
back to us began to fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. ‘Look here,’ said the Medical Man, ‘are you
in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine
has travelled into time?’

‘Certainly,’ said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at
the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the
Psychologist’s face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not
unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)
‘What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there’–he
indicated the laboratory–‘and when that is put together I mean to
have a journey on my own account.’

‘You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?’
said Filby.

‘Into the future or the past–I don’t, for certain, know which.’

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. ‘It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,’ he said.

‘Why?’ said the Time Traveller.

‘Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it
travelled into the future it would still be here all this time,
since it must have travelled through this time.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘If it travelled into the past it would have been
visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!’

‘Serious objections,’ remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

‘Not a bit,’ said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: ‘You
think. You can explain that. It’s presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.’

‘Of course,’ said the Psychologist, and reassured us. ‘That’s a
simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It’s plain
enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor
can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of
a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is
travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than
we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second,
the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or
one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in
time. That’s plain enough.’ He passed his hand through the space in
which the machine had been. ‘You see?’ he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the
Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

‘It sounds plausible enough to-night,’ said the Medical Man; ‘but
wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.’

‘Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?’ asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the
way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember
vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette,
the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but
incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger
edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before
our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly
been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally
complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the
bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better
look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

‘Look here,’ said the Medical Man, ‘are you perfectly serious?
Or is this a trick–like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?’

‘Upon that machine,’ said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp
aloft, ‘I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more
serious in my life.’

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
winked at me solemnly.

II

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who
are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round
him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in
ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and
explained the matter in the Time Traveller’s words, we should have
shown him far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his
motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time
Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we
distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less
clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things
too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt
quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting
their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a
nursery with egg-shell china. So I don’t think any of us said very
much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and
the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of
our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,
the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it
suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the
trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man,
whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar
thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out
of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond–I suppose I was one of
the Time Traveller’s most constant guests–and, arriving late, found
four or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical
Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand
and his watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller,
and–‘It’s half-past seven now,’ said the Medical Man. ‘I suppose
we’d better have dinner?’

‘Where’s—-?’ said I, naming our host.

‘You’ve just come? It’s rather odd. He’s unavoidably detained. He
asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he’s not
back. Says he’ll explain when he comes.’

‘It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,’ said the Editor of a
well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself
who had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the
Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another–a quiet,
shy man with a beard–whom I didn’t know, and who, as far as my
observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was
some speculation at the dinner-table about the Time Traveller’s
absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit.
The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist
volunteered a wooden account of the ‘ingenious paradox and trick’ we
had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition
when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I
was facing the door, and saw it first. ‘Hallo!’ I said. ‘At last!’
And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us.
I gave a cry of surprise. ‘Good heavens! man, what’s the matter?’
cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole tableful
turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and
smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it
seemed to me greyer–either with dust and dirt or because its colour
had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown
cut on it–a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn,
as by intense suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway,
as if he had been dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room.
He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps.
We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a
motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and
pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good:
for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile
flickered across his face. ‘What on earth have you been up to, man?’
said the Doctor. The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. ‘Don’t let
me disturb you,’ he said, with a certain faltering articulation.
‘I’m all right.’ He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took
it off at a draught. ‘That’s good,’ he said. His eyes grew brighter,
and a faint colour came into his cheeks. His glance flickered over
our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm
and comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling
his way among his words. ‘I’m going to wash and dress, and then I’ll
come down and explain things … Save me some of that mutton. I’m
starving for a bit of meat.’

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a question. ‘Tell you presently,’
said the Time Traveller. ‘I’m–funny! Be all right in a minute.’

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again
I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall,
and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had
nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the
door closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered
how he detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my
mind was wool-gathering. Then, ‘Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent
Scientist,’ I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in
headlines. And this brought my attention back to the bright
dinner-table.

‘What’s the game?’ said the Journalist. ‘Has he been doing the
Amateur Cadger? I don’t follow.’ I met the eye of the Psychologist,
and read my own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time
Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don’t think any one else had
noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical
Man, who rang the bell–the Time Traveller hated to have servants
waiting at dinner–for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his
knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The
dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while,
with gaps of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his
curiosity. ‘Does our friend eke out his modest income with a
crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?’ he inquired. ‘I feel
assured it’s this business of the Time Machine,’ I said, and took up
the Psychologist’s account of our previous meeting. The new guests
were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. ‘What was
this time travelling? A man couldn’t cover himself with dust by
rolling in a paradox, could he?’ And then, as the idea came home to
him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn’t they any clothes-brushes in
the Future? The Journalist too, would not believe at any price, and
joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole
thing. They were both the new kind of journalist–very joyous,
irreverent young men. ‘Our Special Correspondent in the Day
after To-morrow reports,’ the Journalist was saying–or rather
shouting–when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in
ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained
of the change that had startled me.

‘I say,’ said the Editor hilariously, ‘these chaps here say you have
been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about
little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?’

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a
word. He smiled quietly, in his old way. ‘Where’s my mutton?’ he
said. ‘What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!’

‘Story!’ cried the Editor.

‘Story be damned!’ said the Time Traveller. ‘I want something to
eat. I won’t say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.
Thanks. And the salt.’

‘One word,’ said I. ‘Have you been time travelling?’

‘Yes,’ said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his
head.

‘I’d give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,’ said the Editor.
The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang
it with his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been
staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine.
The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden
questions kept on rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same
with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by
telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted his
attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a tramp.
The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time Traveller
through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than
usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of
sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate away,
and looked round us. ‘I suppose I must apologize,’ he said. ‘I was
simply starving. I’ve had a most amazing time.’ He reached out his
hand for a cigar, and cut the end. ‘But come into the smoking-room.
It’s too long a story to tell over greasy plates.’ And ringing the
bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.

‘You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?’ he
said to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new
guests.

‘But the thing’s a mere paradox,’ said the Editor.

‘I can’t argue to-night. I don’t mind telling you the story, but
I can’t argue. I will,’ he went on, ‘tell you the story of what
has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from
interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like
lying. So be it! It’s true–every word of it, all the same. I was in
my laboratory at four o’clock, and since then … I’ve lived eight
days … such days as no human being ever lived before! I’m nearly
worn out, but I shan’t sleep till I’ve told this thing over to you.
Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions! Is it agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed ‘Agreed.’ And
with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth.
He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man.
Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only
too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink–and, above all, my
own inadequacy–to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker’s white,
sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the
intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed
the turns of his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the
candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face
of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees
downward were illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each
other. After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the
Time Traveller’s face.

III

‘I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of
the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of
it’s sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday,
when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the
nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get
remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It
was at ten o’clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began
its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put
one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the
saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels
much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took
the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,
pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to
reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round,
I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For
a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted
the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute
or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!

‘I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went
dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing
me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to
traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room
like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The
night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment
came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter
and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night
again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled
my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

‘I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling
exactly like that one has upon a switchback–of a helpless headlong
motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a
black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to
fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,
leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed
the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.
I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too
fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that
ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the
intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her
quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling
stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the
palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness;
the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous
color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak
of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating
band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a
brighter circle flickering in the blue.

‘The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side
upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me
grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour,
now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away.
I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
The whole surface of the earth seemed changed–melting and flowing
under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my
speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun
belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or
less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and
minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and
vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

‘The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked
indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a
kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At
first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but
these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions
grew up in my mind–a certain curiosity and therewith a certain
dread–until at last they took complete possession of me. What
strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our
rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to
look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated
before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about
me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it
seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the
hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even
through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so
my mind came round to the business of stopping.

‘The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some
substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long
as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely
mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated–was slipping like a vapour
through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to
a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into
whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate
contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical
reaction–possibly a far-reaching explosion–would result, and blow
myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions–into the
Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I
was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an
unavoidable risk–one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the
risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.
The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything,
the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the
feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told
myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I
resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over
the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was
flung headlong through the air.

‘There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have
been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me,
and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine.
Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the
confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what
seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron
bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were
dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The
rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove
along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.
“Fine hospitality,” said I, “to a man who has travelled innumerable
years to see you.”

‘Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

‘My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail
grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very
large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white
marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,
instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so
that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of
bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the
faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn,
and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood
looking at it for a little space–half a minute, perhaps, or half an
hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it
denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and
saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was
lightening with the promise of the sun.

‘I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full
temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when
that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have
happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?
What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had
developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly
powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more
dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness–a foul creature to
be incontinently slain.

‘Already I saw other vast shapes–huge buildings with intricate
parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping
in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic
fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to
readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the
thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like
the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue
of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into
nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and
distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out
in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I
felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in
the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear
grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again
grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under
my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One
hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.

‘But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer
house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had
seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

‘Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by
the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of
these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon
which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature–perhaps
four feet high–clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a
leather belt. Sandals or buskins–I could not clearly distinguish
which–were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his
head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm
the air was.

‘He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more
beautiful kind of consumptive–that hectic beauty of which we used
to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence.
I took my hands from the machine.

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