resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could

contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was

evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should

have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down.

And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind

by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this

proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering

our retreat.

'I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must

be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's

heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by

dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.

Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to

widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with

the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In

this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on

the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were

an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

'She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have

cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up,

and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the

wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking

back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my

heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a

The Time Machine