"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 Paleontological 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 Paleontology;
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 old-time 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 saltpetre; 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.
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