The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machineif in this interval the race had lost its manliness and haddeveloped into something inhuman, unsympathetic, andoverwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-worldsavage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting forour common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinentlyslain.‘Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings withintricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-sidedimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. Iwas seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to theTime Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did sothe shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. Thegrey downpour was swept aside and vanished like thetrailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blueof the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloudwhirled into nothingness. The great buildings about mestood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of thethunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmeltedhailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in astrange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clearair, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. Myfear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth,and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with themachine. It gave under my desperate onset and turned33 of 148