Chapter thirteen: A Fight for the Time Machine

‘At about eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow metal from which I had looked at the world on the evening of my arrival. I thought of my first ideas about this future world on that evening, and I couldn’t stop myself laughing at my confidence.

‘I was sad to think how short the dream of human intelligence had been. It had tried to make a comfortable, fair and safe society. It had succeeded – and had then led to this. We forget the law of nature – that change, danger and trouble make us think harder. Nature never asks the brain to work until habit and feeling are- useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

‘So as I see it, the Upper-world people had moved towards their weak prettiness, and the Under-world to hard work. But it seemed that as time passed, the Upper-world had stopped feeding the Under-world. And when other meat failed them, the people of the Under-world had started to eat what hadn’t been allowed before. That is how I understood the situation in my last view of the world of 802,701.

‘Although I was unhappy, this seat, the peaceful view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant after the hard work, excitement and terror of the past few days. I was very tired and sleepy, and so I spread myself out on the grass and slept.

‘I woke up a little before sunset and stretching myself, I walked down the hill towards the white sphinx. And now a most unexpected thing happened. As I came to the pedestal, I found that the metal doors were open. I stopped in front of them, not sure about entering. Inside was a small room, and on a higher place in the corner of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here, after all my thought about breaking in, was an easy solution. I threw my metal bar away, almost sorry not to use it.

‘A sudden thought came into my head as I bent towards the door. This time, at least, I understood the thinking of the Morlocks. Trying not to laugh, I stepped through the door and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have thought since then that the Morlocks had even partly taken it to pieces while trying in their slow way to understand it.

‘Now as I stood and examined it, finding pleasure in just touching it, it happened. I had expected it. The metal panels suddenly closed with a loud noise. I was in the dark and couldn’t get out. This is what the Morlocks thought, I was certain. I smiled.

‘I could already hear them laughing softly as they came towards me. Very calmly I tried to strike a match. I only had to fix the levers and leave then like a ghost. But i had forgotten one little thing. Those matches could only be lit by striking them against the box.

‘You can imagine how all my calm disappeared. The little creatures were close to me. One touched me. I struck at them with the levers and began to get into the seat of the machine. Then one hand touched me and then another. After that I simply had to fight against their fingers for my levers and at the same time feel for the places where these fitted.

‘One lever, in fact, almost got away from me. As it left my hand, I had to hit in the dark with my head – I could hear the Morlocks head ring – to get it back. This was an even more dangerous fight than the fight in the forest, I think.

‘But at last the lever was fixed and I pulled it. The little hands fell away from me. The darkness soon changed to the same grey light that I have already described.