’I don’t know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate.  The sun’s heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.  Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire.  Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame.  In this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth.  The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

’She wanted to run to it and play with it.  I believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her.  But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood.  For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path.  Looking back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill.  I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me.  It was very black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems.  Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there.  I struck none of my matches because I had no hand free.  Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.

’For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-vessels in my ears.  Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me.  I pushed on grimly.  The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard in the Under-world.  There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me.  Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm.  And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.

’It was time for a match.  But to get one I must put her down.  I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks.  Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.  Then the match scratched and fizzed.  I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees.  I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane.  Then I looked at Weena.  She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.  With a sudden fright I stooped to her.  She seemed scarcely to breathe.  I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her.  The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!