examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The
sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in
the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as
I could. They started away, and then I could
feel them approaching me again. They clutched
at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other.
I shivered violently, and shouted again—rather
discordantly. This time they were not so seriously
alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as they
came back at me. I will confess I was horribly
frightened. I determined to strike another match
and escape under the protection of its glare.
I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of
paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the
narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered this
when my light was blown out and in the blackness I
could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves,
and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after
me.
’In a moment I was clutched by several hands,
and there was no mistaking that they were trying to
haul me back. I struck another light, and waved
it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine
how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those
pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey
eyes!—as they stared in their blindness
and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look,
I promise you: I retreated again, and when my
second match had ended, I struck my third. It
had almost burned through when I reached the opening
into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the
throb of the great pump below made me giddy.
Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and,
as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and
I was violently tugged backward. I lit my last
match ...
and it incontinently went out. But
I had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking
violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of
the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft,
while they stayed peering and blinking up at me:
all but one little wretch who followed me for some
way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy.
’That climb seemed interminable to me.
With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly
nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty
in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful
struggle against this faintness. Several times
my head swam, and I felt all the sensations of falling.
At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow,
and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight.
I fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet
and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands
and ears, and the voices of others among the Eloi.
Then, for a time, I was insensible.
