’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.

IX

’We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon.  I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey.  My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare.  Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter.  Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was tired.  And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood.  Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward.  I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable.  I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

’While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures.  There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach.  The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across.  If we could get through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods.  Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down.  And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it.  I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.