utting 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 to-day 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!

'I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went
dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing
me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to
traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room
like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The
night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment
came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter
and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night
again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled
my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

'I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling
exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong
motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a
black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to
fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,
leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed
the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.
I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too
fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that
ever crawled dashed