Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (42 page)

*It
may
be,
of
course,
that
the
floor
did
not
slope,
but
that
the
museum
was
built
into
the
side
of
a
hill.—
E
d.

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 recognised
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
moralised
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.