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where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow
footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed
my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said,
of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep
framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. The
pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found them
discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,
but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I supposed, opened
from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no very
great mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside that
pedestal. But how it got there was a different problem.
'I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned
smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then,
pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open
it. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I
don't know how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were
to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman--it is
how she would look. They went off as if they had received the last
possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next,
with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel
ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and
I tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper
got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by
the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him
towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his
face, and all of a sudden I let him go.
'But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze
panels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit,
I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have been
mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and
hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the
verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people
must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the
slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down
to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am too
Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years,
but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours--that is another matter.
'I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the
bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If you
want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they
mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their
bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as
you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a
puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this
world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses
at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all." Then
suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought
of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future
age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made
myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a
man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not help
myself. I laughed aloud.
'Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little
people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had
something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt
tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no
concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course
of a day or two things got back to the old footing. I made what
progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my
explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or
their language was excessively simple--almost exclusively composed
of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any,
abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their
sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to
convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined
to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze
doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory,
until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural
way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a
circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.
'So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant
richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the
same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material
and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same
blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns. Here and there water shone like
silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and
so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which
presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain
circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth.
One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my
first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously
wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by
the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness,
I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection
with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound:
a thud--thud--thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I
discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of
air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the
throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at
once sucked swiftly out of sight.
'After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers