Kabanata Kabanata 11 · XI. The Palace of Green Porcelain

e Palace of Green Porcelain

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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 this 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.

“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.

“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 _Philosophical Transactions_

and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.

“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 _The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I

could. In part it was a modest _cancan_, 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.

“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.

“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, Phœnician, 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.

“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.

“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.

Chapte