<h2><SPAN name="chap11"></SPAN>XI.<br/> The Palace of Green Porcelain</h2>
<p>“I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it
about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass
remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen
away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy
down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was surprised to
see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea
must once have been. I thought then—though I never followed up the
thought—of what might have happened, or might be happening, to the
living things in the sea.</p>
<p>“The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown
character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to
interpret this, but I only learnt that the bare idea of writing had never
entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she
was, perhaps because her affection was so human.</p>
<p>“Within the big valves of the door—which were open and
broken—we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by
many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The
tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous
objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing
strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower
part of a huge skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some
extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the
upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where
rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had
been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a
Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side I
found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away the thick
dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must
have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their
contents.</p>
<p>“Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South
Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palæontological Section, and a very
splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process
of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the
extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force,
was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work
again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little
people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings
upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily
removed—by the Morlocks, as I judged. The place was very silent. The
thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin
down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and
very quietly took my hand and stood beside me.</p>
<p>“And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of
an intellectual age that I gave no thought to the possibilities it
presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little
from my mind.</p>
<p>“To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green
Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palæontology;
possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least
in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than
this spectacle of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another
short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be
devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind
running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed, no nitrates of
any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in
my mind, and set up a train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of
that gallery, though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I
saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on
down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered.
Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything
had long since passed out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened
vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars
that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I
was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient
readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been attained.
Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly
ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at
which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the ceiling—many
of them cracked and smashed—which suggested that originally the place
had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my element, for rising on
either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded
and many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a
certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these;
the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I
could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that
if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers
that might be of use against the Morlocks.</p>
<p>“Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she
startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have noticed
that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may be, of
course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into
the side of a hill.—ED.] The end I had come in at was quite above
ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the length,
the ground came up against these windows, until at last there was a pit
like the ‘area‘ of a London house before each, and only a
narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the
machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the gradual
diminution of the light, until Weena’s increasing apprehensions drew
my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick
darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust
was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away towards the
dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints.
My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt
that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of machinery. I
called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that
I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then
down in the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering,
and the same odd noises I had heard down the well.</p>
<p>“I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I
left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike
those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever
in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted
in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the
lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute’s strain, and I
rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any
Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock
or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one’s own
descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the
things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I
began to slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer,
restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I
heard.</p>
<p>“Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that
gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first glance
reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and
charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognised as the
decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and
every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped
boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I
been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralised upon the futility of
all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force
was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting
paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the
<i>Philosophical Transactions</i> and my own seventeen papers upon physical
optics.</p>
<p>“Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been
a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of
useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had collapsed, this
gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case. And at
last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of matches. Very
eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not even damp. I
turned to Weena. ‘Dance,’ I cried to her in her own tongue. For
now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared. And so,
in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to
Weena’s huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance,
whistling <i>The Land of the Leal</i> as cheerfully as I could. In part it
was a modest <i>cancan</i>, in part a step dance, in part a skirt dance (so
far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally
inventive, as you know.</p>
<p>“Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped
the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was
a most fortunate, thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier
substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by
chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first
that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour
of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance
had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It
reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a
fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilised millions of
years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was
inflammable and burnt with a good bright flame—was, in fact, an
excellent candle—and I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives,
however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet my iron
crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left
that gallery greatly elated.</p>
<p>“I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would
require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all the
proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how
I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could not carry
both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze gates.
There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of
rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any
cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. One
corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion
among the specimens. In another place was a vast array of
idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, PhÅ“nician, every country on
earth, I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I
wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that
particularly took my fancy.</p>
<p>“As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery
after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere
heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I suddenly found
myself near the model of a tin mine, and then by the merest accident I
discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted
‘Eureka!’ and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I
hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. I never
felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes
for an explosion that never came. Of course the things were dummies, as I
might have guessed from their presence. I really believe that had they not
been so, I should have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze
doors, and (as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all
together into non-existence.</p>
<p>“It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court
within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested
and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position.
Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still to
be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a
thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the
Morlocks—I had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a
blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be
to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the morning there
was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my
iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently
towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them,
largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed
me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether
inadequate for the work.</p>
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