one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard
their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in
the glare, and I struck no more of them.
Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting
loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time
the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would
presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by
killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out
again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among
them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was
gone.
At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this
strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and
making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on
them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through
the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to
another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came
blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists,
trembling as I did so.
For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I
bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the
ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here
and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and
calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads
down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above
the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black
smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing
numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day.
I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was
plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot
describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate
to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved
to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I
contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in
the forest. From its summit I could now make out through a haze of
smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get my
66