’Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people avoided me.  It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze.  Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance.  I was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things got back to the old footing.  I made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there.  Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively simple—­almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs.  There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language.  Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions.  I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way.  Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

’So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames valley.  From every hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns.  Here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky.  A peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth.  One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my first walk.  Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain.  Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match.  But in all of them I heard a certain sound:  a thud—­thud—­thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of air set down the shafts.  Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight.

’After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach.  Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine.  I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people.  It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.