At about eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow metal where I had sat on my first evening. I remembered how quickly I had explained everything then, and I laughed bitterly. Here was the same beautiful view, the same palaces and the same silver river. Some of the little people were bathing in the very place where I had saved Weena, and that gave me a sharp pain. Now I understood what all this beauty covered. The Eloi lived happily in the daylight, like cattle in a field. Like cattle, they knew no enemies. And their end was the same.
How short the dream of human intelligence had been! Man had worked for comfort and safety, and at last he had reached them. But in perfect safety nobody needs to think, and so the Eloi had become weak and pretty, and the Morlocks simple workers at their machines, until their food ran short. That was my final explanation of life in the year eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one. It may be completely wrong.
I was so tired that I lay down on the grass in the warm sun and slept for a long time. I woke a little before sunset and walked down the hill to the White Sphinx, with my iron bar in one hand and the other hand on the matches in my pocket.
And now came a great surprise. The bronze doors in the base of the sphinx were open.
Inside was a small room, and in the corner stood the Time Machine. Its little levers were in my pocket. So after all my plans to break in, the doors were simply open for me. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to use it.
Then a thought came into my head. For once I understood how the Morlocks’ minds worked. I tried not to laugh as I stepped inside and went up to the machine. To my surprise, someone had oiled and cleaned it carefully.
As I stood there, enjoying the touch of my machine, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze doors suddenly slid up and closed with a clang. I was in the dark, in a trap. So the Morlocks thought. I laughed quietly.
I could already hear their soft laughter as they came towards me. Very calmly I tried to strike a match. I only had to fix the levers and disappear like a ghost. But I had forgotten one little thing. These matches could only be lit by striking them against their box, which I had lost.
You can imagine how my calm disappeared. The little brutes were all around me. I hit out at them in the dark with the levers and began to climb into the saddle. Then a hand caught me, and another. I had to fight to keep hold of my levers and at the same time feel for the places where they fitted. They almost got one away from me. As it slipped from my hand, I hit the Morlock in the dark with my head. I heard its skull ring, and I got the lever back.
At last the levers were in place, and I pulled one over. The hands slipped off me. The darkness fell from my eyes, and I was in the same grey light and noise of time travelling that I have described to you.