’Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror
that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous
punishment of human selfishness. Man had been
content to live in ease and delight upon the labours
of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword
and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had
come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like
scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay.
But this attitude of mind was impossible. However
great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had
kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy,
and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation
and their Fear.
’I had at that time very vague ideas as to the
course I should pursue. My first was to secure
some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such
arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That
necessity was immediate. In the next place, I
hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should
have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I
knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks.
Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break
open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx.
I had in mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion
that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze
of light before me I should discover the Time Machine
and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks
were strong enough to move it far away. Weena
I had resolved to bring with me to our own time.
And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued
our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen
as our dwelling.
VIII
’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.
