Chapter 4 — IV.<br/>Time Travelling

“I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the
ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it’s
sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when the
putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was
exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing
was not complete until this morning. It was at ten o’clock today
that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap,
tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and
sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his
skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I
took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,
pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I
felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the
laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I
suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A
moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now
it was nearly half-past three!