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1The Palace of Green Porcelain "I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and
2falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
3fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before
4I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once
5have been. I thought then--though I never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, or might be happening,
6to the living things in the sea. "The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along the
7face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to
8interpret this, but I only learnt that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I
9fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human. "Within the big valves of the door--which
10were open and broken--we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows. At the first
11glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects
12was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was
13clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the
14fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where
15rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the
16huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared
17to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they
18must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents. "Clearly we stood among the
19ruins of some latter-day South Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palæontological Section, and a very splendid array
20of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had,
21through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme
22sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little
23people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some
24instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks, as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our
25footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about
26me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me. "And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of
27an intellectual age that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time
28Machine receded a little from my mind. "To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great
29deal more in it than a Gallery of Palæontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at
30least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of old-time geology in
31decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to
32minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed,
33no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of
34thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I
35saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel
36to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long
37since passed out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals,
38desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for
39that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had
40been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running
41downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of
42them cracked and smashed--which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my
43element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down,
44but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among
45these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at
46what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that
47might be of use against the Morlocks. "Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she startled me. Had
48it not been for her I do not think I should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may
49be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.--ED.] The end I had
50come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the length, the ground came
51up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the 'area' of a London house before each, and only a narrow
52line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to
53notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that
54the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was
55less abundant and its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small
56narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time
57in this academic examination of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that
58I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the gallery I
59heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had heard down the well. "I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a
60sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box.
61Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena,
62deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped
63after a minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull
64I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing
65one's own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to
66leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me
67from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard.
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