'We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above

the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the

next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods

that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as

far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep

in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I

gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms

full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had

anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from

sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the

wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped,

fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending

calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me

onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was

feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the

Morlocks with it.

'While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim

against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was

scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from

their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather

less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare

hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer

The Time Machine