________________________________________________
_ `I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it
about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges
of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green
facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It
lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward
before I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary, or
even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once
have been. I thought then--though I never followed up the
thought--of what might have happened, or might be happening, to
the living things in the sea.
`The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might
help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea
of writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me,
I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection
was so human.
`Within the big valves of the door--which were open and
broken--we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery
lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of
a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable
array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey
covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the
centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge
skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some
extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull
and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one
place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof,
the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was
the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis
was confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared to be
sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the
old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must have
been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of
their contents.
`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 was a most strange,
as for me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I
found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found
it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really
hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that it was paraffin
wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of camphor
was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance
had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of
centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen
done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished
and become fossilized millions of years ago. I was about to
throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and
burned with a good bright flame--was, in fact, an excellent
candle--and I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives,
however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet
my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon.
Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.
`I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It
would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations
in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting
stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a
hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar
of iron promised best against the bronze gates. There were
numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of
rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound.
But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted
into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps,
I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place
was a vast array of idols--Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian,
Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here,
yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the
nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly
took my fancy.
`As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through
gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits
sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In
one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine,
and then by the merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight
case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed
the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then,
selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt
such a disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen
minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course the things
were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I
really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed
off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it
proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into
nonexistence.
`It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open
court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-
trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I
began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us, and
my inaccessible hiding-place had still to be found. But that
troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a thing that
was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks--I
had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze
were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do
would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In
the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards
that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing
knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors.
Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of
the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as
being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not
altogether inadequate for the work. _
Read next: CHAPTER IX
Read previous: CHAPTER VII
Table of content of Time Machine
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
