`I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into futurity.
`As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set--it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.
`I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.
`The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.
`Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.
`As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
`I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.
`So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.
`I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.
`Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth.
`The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.
`A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal--there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing--against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.
“我已经对你们讲过我在时间旅行中遇到的恶心和混乱的情景。这次我在鞍座上姿势没坐对，斜着身体并且没有坐稳。有一阵子，时间机器摇摇摆摆，上下颠簸，我贴紧机器，根本没留意我是怎样飞远的。当我定下神来再次观察刻度表时，我吃惊地发现我又到了别处。一个表记录单日，一个记录千日，一个记录百万日，还有一个记录10亿日。这下我没有开倒档，而是推动操纵杆向前飞进。当我注意这些指示器时，我发现千日的指针像手表的秒针一样在飞转，在飞向未来。
“我继续向前行进，周围的一切慢慢发生了奇异的变化。突突跳动的灰色变得更略了，接着——虽然我仍以高速在行驶——昼夜眨眼般的交过又出现了，这通常表明飞行速度较慢，而且越来越明显。起初我真给弄糊涂了。昼夜的变化越来越慢，太阳通过天空也越来越慢，最后它们好像要用上几个世纪的时间。终于一片稳定的暮色出现在大地上，只有著星闪过阴沉的天空时才不时地将它划破。表示太阳的光带早已消失，因为太阳已停止落山。它只在西方上上下下，而且变得更大更红。月亮已跑得无影无踪。星星的旋转也逐渐变慢，成了蠕动的光点。终于，在我停机前不久，又红又大的太阳在地平线上静止不动了，像散发着闷热的一个巨大穹窿，还不时地隐去一会儿。它一度再次明亮起来，但迅速又回到了阴沉的赤热状态。我通过太阳起旺速度的减慢，发觉潮汐的涨落作用结束了．地球只有一面朝着太阳，就像我们自己的时代里月亮只有一面地向地球。我小心翼翼地开始倒转行驶方向，我这样小心是因为我上次摔的倒栽葱还历历在目。旋转的指针越来越慢，千日针似乎不动了，单日针在刻度盘上也不再是一片模糊。指针继续放慢速度，荒凉海滩的，朦胧轮廓渐渐清晰起来。
“我轻轻地停下时间机器，坐在上面眺望四方。天空不再是蓝色的，东北方向墨黑一片，苍白的星星在黑暗中不停地闪耀。头顶上是一片深印度红，没有星星。东南方向渐渐发亮，地平线上成了一片鲜艳夺目的猩红色，太阳巨大的躯体躺在那里，红彤彤的，一动不动。我周围的岩石都呈刺眼的红色，我最初能够看到的全部生命迹象是翠绿的植物，它们覆盖了东南面的每一个凸现的地方。这是人们在森林里的青苔或岩洞里的地衣上看到的那种浓绿，这类植物一年四季都生长在缺乏阳光的阴暗处。
“时间机器就停在一个倾斜的海滩上。大海向西南方向伸展，汇进了苍白天空下清晰明亮的地平线。没有激浪，也没有波涛。因为天空中连一丝风也不吹。海上只有像呼吸般轻柔的细浪微微起伏，显示这永恒的大海仍然在运动。海岸把海水撕开，海岸边是一层厚厚的盐霜，在惨淡的天空下呈粉红色。我感到一阵头闷，注意到自己呼吸非常急促。这感觉使我想起了我唯一的一次登山经历，我由此判断空气比我们现在要稀薄。
“远处荒凉的斜坡上传来一声尖叫，我看到像是一只巨大的白蝴蝶，斜着身体，拍翅飞上天空，又盘旋着在斜坡那边的小山丘上消失了。它凄凉的叫声吓得我浑身哆啸，我在机器上更加坐稳了身体。再一次举目四望，看到不远处我原以为是一块红岩石的东西正在向我缓缓靠过来。这时我看清这东西其实是一只巨蟹一样的怪兽。你们能想象出和那边桌子一样大的巨蟹吗？它的许多腿缓慢又不稳地爬动着，大螫摇摇晃晃，长长的触须像赶车人的鞭子晃悠着在探路，凸出的双眼在金属似的面孔两侧向你闪烁。它的背上皱痕条条，上面长着难看的节疤，布满了硬壳。我可以看到它爬行时，结构复杂的嘴里伸出许多触须在摇曳探索。
“我注视着正在朝我爬来的这个凶神恶煞，感到脸上像栖着苍蝇一样有东西在弄我痒痒。我想用手把它拂去，可它立刻又回来了，几乎与此同时我的耳边也有东西伸了上来。我挥手打去，抓到了像线一样的东西，它正迅速从我手里脱出去。我感到一阵可怕的恶心，转过身来，发现我抓住了正爬在我身后的另一只巨蟹的触须。它罪恶的眼珠在打转，嘴巴馋涎欲滴，难看的大钳上盖着粘乎乎的海藻，正朝我落下来。我立即抓住操纵杆，把自己开到距离这些怪兽1个月的时间里。不过我仍然在同一个海滩上，并且刚停下来就清楚地看到了它们。昏暗的天色下，好像有几十只蟹怪在翠绿的叶片中爬来爬去。
“我无法向你们表达笼罩着世界的那种可恶的荒凉感。东方红色的天空，北方的漆黑，咸水的死海，爬着这些缓慢、令人作呕的怪兽的石滩，地衣植物令人难受的绿色，所有这一切促成了这种叫人毛骨悚然的效果。我又向前开了100年，还是那个红太阳，只是大了点暗了点，还是那片奄奄一息的大海，还是那种阴冷的空气，还是那群陆地甲壳动物在绿草和红岩中爬进爬出。而在西边的天空中，我看到一条淡淡的弧线，像一轮巨大的新月。
“我就这样旅行着。由于地球命运的变幻莫测，我每飞越1000年左右的时光便要停下来，怀着一腔奇特的迷恋之情眺望西天的太阳，看着它越变越大，越变越暗，望着古老的地球上的生命渐渐逝去。终于，在3000多万年以后，太阳这个巨大的赤热的穹窿遮住了将近十分之一的阴沉的天空。接着我又停住时间机器。因为成群爬行的巨蟹消失了，红色的海滩除了青灰色的叶苔和地农好像已没有生命，现在这海滩上出现了斑驳的白色。一股寒气向我袭来。白得罕见的雪花旋转着一阵阵落下。东北方黑暗的星空下，雪光融融，我可以看到白里透红的山峰绵延起伏。海边结着冰，海面上漂着冰块，但是盐海的主海面仍然没有结冰，辽阔的大海在不朽的夕照下泛起一片血红。
“我朝四周张望，想看看是否有动物留下的痕迹。一种莫名的恐惧使我始终没有离开时间机器。但是，地上、空中、海里我都没看见有什么在活动。只有岩石上的绿色粘液表明生命还没有灭绝。海里出现了一道浅浅的沙坝，海水从海滩上退了下去。我仿佛看到一个黑东西在这沙坝上扑扑地跳动，可当我定神细看时，它又静止不动了。我断定我是看花了眼，坚信那黑东西只是一块岩石。天上的星星耀眼夺目，可我好像觉得它们不在闪烁。
“突然间，我注意到太阳西侧的圆弧发生了变化，弧线上出现了一个凹角，一个小湾。小湾越变越大，我目瞪口呆地望着渐渐暗下来的白天，随即认识到日食开始了。不是月亮就是木星正从地球和太阳之间穿过。很自然，我起先以为是月亮，可有许多迹象使我相信真正看到的是一颗内圈行星在离地球很近的地方经过。
“天色迅速转黑。起风了，冷风从东方吹来阵阵凉爽，空中缤纷的雪花越飘越密，海边传来了大海的混通低语。除了这些没有生命的声音，世界寂静无声。寂静无声？要描述这种寂静是不容易的。所有的人声、羊叫声、鸟叫声、虫鸣声，一切构成我们生活背景的骚动声全都结束了。天色越来越黑，旋转的雪花也更密了，在我眼前飞舞，空中的寒气更加强烈了。终于，远处白色的山峰，一个紧挨着一个消失在黑暗之中。微风转成了萧萧寒风。我看见日食中心的黑影向我袭来。顷刻间，只能看到苍白的星星了，其他的一切都处在昏暗的瞟陇中，天空一片漆黑。
“面对茫茫的黑暗，我胆战心惊。刺骨的寒冷和呼吸时感到的疼痛都使我支撑不住了。我浑身颤栗，恶心得要命。这时，太阳的边缘上又出现了一个赤热的圆弧。我走下机器想休整一下，我感到晕头晕脑，无法面对自己的归途，站在那里，心里又恶心又烦乱。这时候，我又看到了沙坝上的那东西在动，这下可以肯定它是会动的东西，后面是一片红红的海水。这是个圆溜溜的东西，可能和足球差不多大小，或许还要大点，触须拖了下来。在滚滚血红色波涛的映衬下，这东西看上去似乎是黑色的，并且一阵阵地到处乱跳。接着，我感到自己简直要晕过去了。但是，我极其害怕倒下来，害怕一个人无依无靠地躺在这还远而恐怖的昏暗中。我强打精神，爬上了鞍座。”