The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machinefaces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhumanthey looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless,pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness andbewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: Iretreated again, and when my second match had ended, Istruck my third. It had almost burned through when Ireached the opening into the shaft. I lay down on theedge, for the throb of the great pump below made megiddy. Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and,as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I wasviolently tugged backward. I lit my last match … and itincontinently went out. But I had my hand on theclimbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengagedmyself from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedilyclambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering andblinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followedme for some way, and wellnigh secured my boot as atrophy.‘That climb seemed interminable to me. With the lasttwenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. Ihad the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold. The lastfew yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness.Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations offalling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth90 of 148