H.G. Wells
1895
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H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was an English author and a founder of the science fiction genre. In The Time Machine, a scientist travels through time.
I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time traveling. This time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time, I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, unaware of how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again, I was amazed to see my progress. One dial displays days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of aligning the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators, the thousands of days dial was sweeping round faster than the seconds hand of a watch — into the future.
As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. This puzzled me very much at first. At last a steady twilight brooded1 over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the dark sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set — rather, it grew ever broader and redder.
All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, sometime before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun. Very cautiously, I began to reduce my progress. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands dial seemed motionless and the daily dial was no longer a mere mist upon its display. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.
I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. Overhead the sky was lurid — a deep red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish color, and the only trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their southeastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen2 in caves.
The machine was standing on a sloping beach. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. All along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick encrustation of salt — pink under the glaring sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied.3
Far away up the desolate slope, I heard a harsh scream and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as a table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennæ, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated with ungainly bumps, and a greenish crust blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps4 of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.
As I stared at this sinister apparition5 crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this and caught something threadlike. With a frightful uneasiness, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with slime, were descending upon me. In a flash, my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the somber light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky; the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters; the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants; the thin air that hurts one’s lungs. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun — a little larger, a little duller — the same dying sea, the same sparse air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weeds and the red rocks. In the westward sky, I glimpsed the curved pale line of a vast new moon.
Text: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895) is in the public domain. This text has been modified.
Image: "Driving through a fire" by Maxim Medvedev is licensed under CC0.
Notes:
spread
a crusty plant that grows on rocks
thin
feelers
a ghostlike image
Assessment Questions
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Question 5
PART A: What is the meaning of "corrugated" as it is used in paragraph 6?
A. animated
B. exposed
C. polished
D. rugged
1 answer
The meaning of "corrugated" as it is used in paragraph 6 can be best described as:
D. rugged
In this context, "corrugated" refers to the surface texture of the creature's back, indicating that it has ridges and grooves, which gives it a rugged appearance.
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