disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set it simply rose and fell in
the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had
vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had
given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I
stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the
horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then
suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while
glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen
red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting
that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest
with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the
earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I
began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands
until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no
longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines
of a desolate beach grew visible.
I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.
The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out
of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars.
Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it
grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the
huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a
harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at
first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting
point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one
sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these
grow in a perpetual twilight.
The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to
the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan
sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was
stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle
breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living.
And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick
incrustation of salt pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of
oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast.
The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and
from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.
71