After perhaps half a mile of this, the trees thinned; I walked through a fringe of palm trees and into the glare of sunlight, and rough, young sand scraped against my boots. I found myself at the head of a beach. Beyond a strip of white sand a body of water glittered, so wide I could not see its far side. The sun was low in the sky behind me, but quite intense; I could feel its warmth pressing on the flesh of my neck and scalp.

In the distance — some way from me, along the long, straight beach — I saw a family of Diatryma birds. The two adults preened, wrapping their necks around each other, while three fledglings waded about on their ungainly legs, splashing and hooting, or sat in the water and shivered moisture into their oily feathers. The whole ensemble, with their black plumage, clumsy frames and minuscule wings, looked comical, but I kept a careful eye on their movements while I was there, for even the smallest of the youngsters was three or four feet tall, and quite muscular.

I walked to the edge of the water; I moistened my fingers and licked them. The water was salty: sea water.

I thought the sun had dipped lower, behind the forest, and it must be descending into the west. Therefore I had walked perhaps half a mile to the east of the Time-Car’s position, so here I was — I pictured it — somewhere near the intersection of Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. And, in this Palaeocene Age, it was the fringe of a Sea! I was looking across this ocean, which appeared to cover all of London to the east of Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps, I mused, this Sea was some extension of the North Sea or Channel, which had intruded into London. If I was right, we had been quite lucky; if the level of the seas had raised itself just a little further, Nebogipfel and I should have emerged into the depths of the ocean, and not at its shore.

I took off my boots and socks, tied them to my belt by their laces, and waded a short way into the water. The liquid was cool as it worked around my toes; I was tempted to dip my face into it, but I refrained, for fear of the interaction of the salt with my wounds. I found a depression in the sand, which looked as if it would form a pool at low tide. I dug my hands into the sand here, and came up immediately with a collection of creatures: burrowing bivalves, gastropods, and what looked like oysters. There seemed to be a small variety of species, but there was evidently a high abundance of specimens in this fertile Sea.

There at the fringe of that ocean, with the gurgling water lapping about my toes and fingers, and with the sun warm on my neck, a great feeling of peace descended on me. As a child I had been taken for day-trips by my parents to Lympne and Dungeness, and I would walk to the edge of the Sea — just as I had today — and imagine I was alone in the world. But now, it was nearly true! It was remarkable to think that no ships sailed this new ocean, anywhere in the world; that there were no cities of men on the other side of the jungle behind me — indeed, the only flickers of intelligence on the planet were myself, and the poor, wounded Morlock. But it was not a forbidding prospect — not a bit of it — not after the awful darkness and chaos of 1938, which I had so recently escaped.

I straightened up. The Sea was charming, but we could not drink salt water! I took careful note of the point at which I had emerged from the jungle — I had no wish to lose Nebogipfel in that arboreal gloom — and I struck barefoot out along the water’s edge, away from the family of Diatryma.

After perhaps a mile, I came to a brook which bubbled out of the forest, and came trickling down the beach to the Sea. When I tested this, I found it to be fresh water, and it seemed quite clear. I felt a great access of relief: at least we should not die today! I dropped to my knees and plunged my head and neck in the cool, bubbling stuff. I drank down great gulps, and then took off my jacket and shirt and bathed my head and neck. Crusted blood, stained brown by exposure to the air, swirled away towards the Sea; and when I straightened up I felt much refreshed.

Now I faced the challenge of how to transport this bounty to Nebogipfel. I needed a cup, or some other container.

I spent some minutes sitting by the side of that stream, peering about in a baffled fashion. All my ingenuity seemed to have been exhausted by my latest tumble through time, and this final puzzle was one step too far for my tired brain.

In the end, I took my boots from my belt, rinsed them out as well as I could, and filled them up with stream water; then I transported them back along the beach and through the forest, to the waiting Morlock. As I bathed Nebogipfel’s battered face, and tried to rouse him to drink, I promised myself that the next day I should find something rather more suitable than an old boot to use as a dinner service.

Nebogipfel’s right leg had been mangled by the assault of the Diatryma; the knee seemed crushed, and the foot was resting at an unnatural angle. Using a sharp fragment of Time-Car hull — I had no knife — I made a rudimentary effort to shave his flaxen hair from the damaged areas. I washed off the exposed flesh as best I could: at least the surface wounds seemed to have closed, and there was no sign of infection.

During my clumsy manipulations — I am no medical man — the Morlock, still unconscious, grunted and mewled with pain, like a cat.

Having cleaned the wounds, I ran my hands along the leg, but could detect no obvious break in the shin or calf bones. As I had noted before, the main damage seemed to be in the knee and ankle areas, and I registered this with dismay, for, while I might have been able to set a broken tibia by touch, I could see no way I could treat such damage as Nebogipfel had sustained. Still, I rummaged through the wreckage of our car until I had found two straight sections of framework. I took my improvised knife to my jacket — I did not anticipate the garment being terribly useful in such a climate as this — and produced a set of bandages, which I washed off.

Then, taking my courage in my hands, I straightened out the Morlock’s leg and foot. I bound his leg tight to the splints, strapping it for support against the other, uninjured leg.

The Morlock’s screams, echoing from the trees, were terrible to hear.

Exhausted, I dined that night on oysters — raw, for I had no strength to construct a fire — and I propped myself up, close to the Morlock, with my back against a tree trunk and Moses’s wrench in my hand.

I established a camp on the shore of my Palaeocene Sea, close to that fresh-water brook I had found. I decided we should be healthier, and safer from attack, there rather than in the gloom of the forest. I set up a sunshade for Nebogipfel, using bits of the Time-Car with items of clothing stretched over them.

I carried Nebogipfel to this site in my arms. He was as light as a child, and still only half conscious; he looked up at me, helpless, through the ruins of his goggles, and it was hard for me to remember that he was a representative of a species which had crossed space, and tamed the sun!

My next priority was fire. The available wood — fallen branches and so forth — was moist and moldy, and I took to carrying it out to the edge of the beach, to allow it to dry. With some fallen leaves to act as kindling, and a spark from a stone beaten against Time-Car metal, I was able to ignite a flame readily enough. At first I went through the ritual of restarting the fire daily, but soon discovered the doubtless ancient trick of keeping coals glowing in the fire’s pit during the day, with which it was a simple matter to re-ignite the blaze as required.

Nebogipfel’s convalescence progressed slowly. Enforced unconsciousness, to a member of a species who do not know sleep, is a grave and disturbing thing, and on his revival he sat in the shade for some days, passive and unwilling to talk. But he proved able to eat the oysters and bivalves I fetched up from the Sea, albeit with a deep reluctance. In time I was able to vary our diet with the cooked flesh of turtle — for that creature was quite abundant, all along the shore. After some practice, I succeeded in bringing down clusters of the fruits of the shoreline palm trees by hurling lumps of metal and rocks high into the branches. The nuts proved very useful: their milk and flesh varied our diet; their empty shells served as containers for a variety of purposes; and even the brown fibers which clung to the shells were capable of being woven into a crude cloth. However, I have no great facility for such fine work, and I never got much further than making myself a cap — a broad-brimmed affair, like a coolie’s.