'I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes

with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the

saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite

time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite

unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials

again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records

days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and

another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers,

I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I

came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was

sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into

futurity.

'As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of

things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though I was

still travelling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession

of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace,

returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much

at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower,

and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed

to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over

the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared

across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the

113

The Time Machine