Chapter 15The Time Traveller’s Return

"So, I came back. I must’ve been totally out of it on that machine for ages. The days and nights started flashing by again, the sun got that golden glow, the sky was blue. I could finally breathe easy. The land kept shifting, like waves. The hands on the dials started spinning backward."

Finally, I saw those blurry shadows of houses, signs of humanity going downhill. Those changed too, and others popped up. Then, when the million dial hit zero, I slowed things down.

"I started to recognize our own buildings, the thousands hand went back to the start, and the nights and days started ticking by slower and slower. Then, the old lab walls came into view. I really eased the machine down. "I noticed one little thing that felt weird.

I think I told you that when I left, before I got super fast, Mrs. Watchett zipped across the room, like a rocket. But when I was coming back, I passed that moment again when she walked through the lab. This time, every move she made was like a mirror image of what she'd done before.

The door at the bottom opened, and she quietly floated up the lab, going backward, and vanished behind the door she’d come in through. Just before that, I thought I saw Hillyer for a second; but he just flashed by.

"Then I stopped the machine, and there was the old lab again, my tools, my stuff, just like I’d left them. I got off the thing, kinda shaky, and sat down on my bench. I trembled like crazy for a few minutes. Then I calmed down. My old workshop was all around me, exactly as it had been."

I could’ve slept there, and it would’ve felt like a dream. "But not quite! The thing had started from the south-east corner of the lab. It ended up back in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it."

That tells you exactly how far it is from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, where the Morlocks took my machine. "For a while, my brain just froze. Then I got up and came through this passage, limping, because my heel still hurt, and feeling totally grimy."

I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by the door. I looked at the date and it was today! I checked the clock and it was almost eight o’clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated - I felt so sick and weak. Then I smelled some good, real meat, and opened the door to you.

You know the rest. I washed up, ate dinner, and now I’m telling you the story.