Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate

parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping

in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic

fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to

readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the

thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like

the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue

of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into

nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and

distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out

in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I

felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in

the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear

grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again

grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under

my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One

hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily

in attitude to mount again.

'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I

looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote

future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer

house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had

seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

The Time Machine