Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 62: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

166 | teenth century Banstead, a vast green pile, of a different character from any I had hitherto seen. It was larger than even the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade appeared to me Oriental in its character. The face of it had the luster as well as the pale green tint, a kind of bluish green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain. The difference in appearance in the building suggested a difference in its use. I was minded to push on and explore it. But the day was growing late and I had come upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit. I resolved to postpone this examination for the following day, and returned to the welcome and caresses of little Weena. “But the next morning I was in a mood of re- morse for my hesitation in descending the well and facing the Morlocks in their caverns. I perceived my curiosity regarding this great pile of Green Porcelain was a mere self-deception to shirk the experience I dreaded by another day. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning toward a well near the ruins of granite and aluminum. “Little Weena ran by my side. She followed me to the well dancing, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely - diseoncerted. ““Good-by, little Weena,’ said I, kissing her, and then putting her down I began to feel over the par- apet for the climbing hooks—rather hastily, for I feared my courage might leak away. “At first Weena watched me in amazement, and then she gave a most piteous cry, and running to me began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat of the well. “I saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks by which I hung. “I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and since they were adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued. My weight suddenly bent one of the hooks and almost swung me off it down into the blackness beneath. “For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I did not dare to rest again, and though my arms and back were presently acutely painful, I continued to clamber with as quick a motion as possible down the sheer descent. Glanc- ing upward I saw the aperture, a mere small blue disk above me, in which a star was visible, and little Weena’s head appeared as a round black pro- jection. The thudding sound of some machine be- low me grew louder and more oppressive. Every- thing save that minute circle above was profoundly dark. When I looked up again Weena had disap- peared. “I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and leave the underworld alone. But while I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. - “It was with intense relief that I saw dimly com- AMAZING STORIES ing up a foot to the right of me, a slender loophole in the wall of the shaft, and swinging myself in, found it was the aperture of 4 narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and rest. “It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I was trembling with the pro- longed fear of falling. Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes, The air was full of the throbbing and hum of the machinery that pumped the air down the shaft. aT DO not know how long I lay in that tunnel. & was roused by a soft hand touching my face, — Starting up in the darkness, I snatched at my, Matches and hastily striking one saw three grotes« que, white creatures, similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. Living as they did in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the eyes of the abyssmal fishes or of any purely nocturnal crea- tures, and they reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fied incontinently, vanishing up dark gutters and tunnels from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion. -“T tried to eall to them, but what language they had was apparently a different one from that of the Overworld people. So that I was needs left to my own unaided exploration. The thought of flight rather than exploration was even at that time in my mind. “*You are in for it now,’ said I to myself, and went on. “Feeling my way along this tunnel of Mine, the confused noise of machinery grew louder, and pres- ently the walls fel] away from me and I came to a large open Space, and striking another match saw I had entered a vast arched cavern extending into darkness, at last, beyond the range of my light. “The view I had of this cavern was as much ag one could see in the burning of a match. N eces- sarily my memory of it is very vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dim and threw grotesque black shadows, in which the spectral Mor- locks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the bye, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal upon which a mea] seemed to be spread. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous. Even at the time I remember thinking what large ani- mal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct, the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the white figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again. Then the match burned down and stung my fingers and fell, a wriggling red spot in the black. “I have thought since how particularly ill equip- ped I was. When I had started. with the Time Machine I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the future would certainly be ins finitely in front of us in all their appliances, f had come without arms, Comicboo! ’S..C OM