plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an

appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same

red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the

same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in

and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward

sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

'So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a

thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate,

watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller

in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At

last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of

the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling

heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of

crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green

liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with

white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again

came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay

under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating

crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the

sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse

of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still

unfrozen.

I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A

certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the

The Time Machine