CHAPTER ELEVEN

In my hurry to get away from the Morlocks I had not had the time to properly sit in the machine's seat. So I was moving extremely quickly through time sitting a little uncomfortably on my side. Without thinking or seeing what I was doing, I had pushed the levers as far down as they could move. The speed at which I was now traveling made me feel very ill, for I must have been jumping hundreds of years every second.

Then I noticed something strange. Even though I was moving faster than ever before, the alternation of light and dark that marked the passing of days, something which should only have happened at a much slower speed, began again to occur. And as I continued further into the future, the flashing light grew slower, until finally a single, unchanging light, similar to the fight we see just before the sun completely sets, remained. The moon had disappeared entirely and the sun, much larger now than before, cast its light on the earth, but now only from the West. It seemed that the earth had stopped spinning and now only one part of it faced the sun, much like the moon in our time faces us.

I decided to stop and have a look around. Very carefully, I started to pull back the levers, for I did not want to be thrown from the machine as I had before. Soon I saw a beach and beyond it the sea. This part of the earth had remained mostly in darkness, except for the Western edge which possessed a faint red glow from the sun. There were no stars to be seen in the sky above me.

The sea was very calm. No wind blew, no waves crashed. I would have thought it dead had I not noticed a line of salt a few meters from the edge of the water, telling me that, even though there was no moon, there was still some kind of tide. My breathing was much more difficult than usual, indicating a great decrease in breathable air. The ground, in all directions, except that of the sea, was completely covered by thin, green vegetation. It looked very much like the type of plants, which grow in areas of very little light, such as caves or the bottom of a thick forest.

Suddenly, up on a hill to my left, I heard a terrible scream. There, I saw a huge animal spread its wings and take flight. It looked like a giant insect, larger than a man. I grabbed the levers in case of a sudden need to escape, but was relieved to see the creature fly away behind some hills in the distance. However, in the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving at my right. I turned and found a huge crab coming toward me. It was as large as my time machine, but it moved very slowly. On my cheek I then felt what seemed like a bug of some kind. I hit at it with my right hand, but was surprised to feel something long and stick-like there. I grabbed hold of it and, turning backwards, saw that it was the 'feeler' of yet another crab just behind me! It was just about to try and grab me, when I pushed the levers forward a little and distanced myself from it by a month. The world, of course, looked very much the same, except that there were now even more crabs on the beach. I decided that this period of time on earth had very little to keep my interest, so I traveled one hundred years further. Again, everything seemed the same, but now a new kind of moon had appeared in the Eastern part of the sky.

I pushed the levers forward again and this time kept going until I saw no more of those crabs. I was approaching thirty million years into the future, when I finally stopped the machine again. I found myself in what seemed to be the beginnings of an ice-age. The air was very cold and the ground covered in white snow, but only the edge of the sea was frozen. I tried to find some kind of sign of life, but there was nothing. I thought that I had seen something black jumping about the beach, but when I looked carefully at it, it looked as though it had never moved. I felt that my eyes were playing tricks on me.

In the West, a black shadow seemed to begin to cover part of the sun I could see from this side of the earth. It was an eclipse, just as in our day when the moon passes between the earth and the sun. However, this was no moon, it was much too large. No, I believe that it was one of the planets, which had moved closer to ours. Possibly Mercury, I could not be certain. Once it had moved into place and had covered the sun entirely, the earth was in nearly total darkness. I could feel more and more flakes of snow starting to fall. And what I became most aware of was the silence all around me. There were no birds, no sounds from the sea, no wind. Just silence. It felt like death. My whole body shook with cold. But then, moments later, the sun came back out from behind the planet and threw some of its light on the Western horizon. Then that black object I had thought I saw jumping about on the beach started to move again. It was only the size of a football and it had long 'feelers' hanging from what must have been its head. This was the only sign of life in this age that I could find. The terrible feeling of death was still present in my mind. I now felt that I had seen enough of the future, and that it was time to go back home.

(end of section)