📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 69
1The Further Vision "I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time
2I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the
3machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I
4was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days,
5and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with
6them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the
7seconds hand of a watch--into futurity. "As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The
8palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession
9of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled
10me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun
11across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a
12twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the
13sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set--it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever
14broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had
15given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted
16motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At
17one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I
18perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to
19rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my
20former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one
21seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a
22desolate beach grew visible. "I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer
23blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars.
24Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by
25the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and
26all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point
27on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants
28which like these grow in a perpetual twilight. "The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to
29the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a
30breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal
31sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of
32salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very
33fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more
34rarefied than it is now. "Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white
35butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound
36of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw
37that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was
38really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly
39and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennæ, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes
40gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a
41greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and
42feeling as it moved. "As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as
43though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
44immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my
45hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just
46behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly
47claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a
48month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I
49stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense
50green. "I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward
51blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform
52poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling
53effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying
54sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red
55rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon. "So I travelled, stopping ever and again,
56in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange
57fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more
58than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the
59darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save
60for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed
61me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight
62of the sable sky, and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea
63margin, with drifting masses farther out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset,
64was still unfrozen. "I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension
65still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the
66rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded
67from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at
68it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were
69intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.
🎉 全部完成！共 69 行