"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 recognized 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 moralized 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.
"Now, I still think that for this box of matches to
have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for
me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier
substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I
suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that it was
paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of camphor was
unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to
survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia
painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have
perished and become fossilized millions of years ago. I was about to throw it
away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burned with a good bright
flame was, in fact, an excellent candle and I put it in my pocket. I found no
explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet my
iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left
that gallery greatly elated.
"I cannot tell you all the story of that long
afternoon. It would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations
in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of
arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could
not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze
gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of
rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any
cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner
I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the
specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols--Polynesian, Mexican,
Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding
to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster
from South America that particularly took my fancy.
"As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went
through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits
sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the merest accident
I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted
'Eureka!' and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then,
selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt such a
disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion
that never came. Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed
from their presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should have
rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my
chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into nonexistence.
"It was after that, I think, that we came to a little
open court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we
rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our
position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had
still to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession
a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks--I had
matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed
to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,
protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine.
Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing
knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I
had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other
side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my
bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.
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