Perhaps if I had had some experience of Tropical conditions before our stranding in the Palaeocene, I might have been prepared for the Storm.

The day had been heavy and more humid than usual, and the air near the Sea had that odd, light-impregnated quality one associates with a forthcoming change of weather. That evening, exhausted by my labors and uncomfortable, I was glad to fall into my pallet; at first, though, the heat was so great that sleep was slow to come.

I was woken by a slow patter of raindrops falling onto our loose roof of palm fronds. I could hear the rain coming down into the forest behind us — bullets of water hammering against the leaves — and pounding into the sand of the beach. I could not hear, or see, Nebogipfel; it was the darkest part of the night.

And then the Storm fell on us.

It was as if some lid had been opened up in the sky; gallons of rainwater came hurtling down, pushing in our palm-frond roof in a moment. The wreckage of our flimsy hut clattered down around me, and I was drenched to the skin; I was still on my back, and lay staring up into the rod-like paths of the raindrops, which receded into a cloud-obscured heaven.

I struggled to get up, but soaked roof-fronds impeded me, and my pallet turned into a muddy swamp. Soon I was coated in mud and filth, and with the water hammering at my scalp and trickling into my eyes, I was all but blind.

By the time I reached my feet, I was dismayed at the alacrity with which our shelter was collapsing; all its struts had fallen, or were leaning crazily. I could make out the boxy structure of Nebogipfel’s reconstructed time-device, but it was already all but buried by bits of the hut.

I cast about in that sodden, slippery wreckage, dragging away fronds and bits of cloth. I found Nebogipfel: he looked like an oversize rat, with his hair plastered against his body and his knees tucked up against his chest. He had lost his goggles and was quivering, quite helpless. I was relieved to find him so easily; for the night was his normal time of operation, and he might have been anywhere within a mile or so of the hut.

I bent to scoop him up, but he turned to face me, his ruined eye a pit of darkness. “The Time-Car! We must save the Time-Car!” His liquid voice was almost inaudible against the Storm. I reached for him again, but, feebly, he struggled away from me.

With the raindrops hammering against my scalp, I growled in protest; but, gamely, I waded through the litter of our home to Nebogipfel’s device. I hauled great handfuls of fronds from it, but found the framework embedded in a deepening mud, all tangled up with clothes and cups and the remnants of our attempts at furniture. I took hold of the frame’s uprights and tried to haul the whole thing free of the mud by main force, but succeeded only in bending the shape of the frame, and then in snapping open its corners.

I straightened up and looked about. The hut was quite demolished now. I saw how the water was beginning to run out of the forest, over the sand and down to the ocean. Even our friendly fresh-water stream was becoming broader and more angry, and itself threatened to burst its shallow banks and overrun us.

I abandoned the Time-Car and stalked over to Nebogipfel. “It’s all up,” I shouted to him. “We have to get away from here.”

“But the time-device—”

“We have to chuck it! Can’t you see? We’re going to get washed into the Sea, at this rate!”

He strove to rise to his feet, with hanks of his hair dangling like bits of sodden cloth. I made to grab him, and he tried to wriggle out of my grasp; if he had been healthy, perhaps, he could have evaded me, but his damaged leg impeded him, and I caught him.

“I can’t save it!” I shouted into his face. “We’ll be lucky to get out of this lot with our blessed lives!”

And with that I threw him over my shoulder, and stalked out of our hut and towards the forest. Instantly I found myself wading through inches of cold, muddy water. I slipped more than once on the squirming sand, but I kept one arm wrapped around the wriggling body of the Morlock.

I reached the fringe of the forest. Under the shelter of the canopy, the pressure of the rain was lessened. It was still pitch black, and I was forced to stumble forward into darkness, tripping on roots and colliding with boles, and the ground under me was sodden and treacherous. Nebogipfel gave up his struggling and lay passive over my shoulder.

At last I reached a tree I thought I remembered: thick and old, and with low side-branches that spread out from the trunk at a little above head-height. I hooked the Morlock over a branch, where he hung like a soaked-through coat. Then — with some effort, for I am long past my climbing days — I hauled myself off the ground and got myself sat on a branch with my back against the trunk.

And there we stayed as the Storm played itself out. I kept one hand resting on the Morlock’s back, to ensure he did not fall or strive to return to the hut; and I was forced to endure a sheet of water which ran down the trunk of the tree and over my back and shoulders.

As the dawn approached, it picked out an eerie beauty in that forest. Peering up into the canopy I could make out how the rain trickled across the engineered forms of the leaves, and was channeled down the trunks to the ground; I am not much of a botanist but now I saw that the forest was like a great machine designed to survive the predations of such a Storm as this, far better than man’s crude constructions.

As the light increased I tore a strip from the remains of my trousers — I was without a shirt — and tied it over Nebogipfel’s face, to protect his naked eyes. He did not stir.

The rains died at midday, and I judged it safe to descend. I lifted Nebogipfel to the ground, and he could walk, but I was forced to lead him by the hand, for he was blind without his goggles.

The day beyond the jungle was bright and fresh; there was a pleasant breeze off the Sea, and light clouds scudded across an almost English sky. It was as if the world was remade, and there was nothing left of yesterday’s oppressiveness.

I approached the remains of the hut with some reluctance. I saw scraps — bits of smashed-up structure, the odd nut-shell cup, and so forth — all half-buried in the damp sand. In the midst of it all was a baby Diatryma, pecking with its great clumsy beak at the rubble. I shouted, “Hoi!” — and ran forward, clapping my hands over my head. The bird-beast ran off, the loose yellow flesh of its legs wobbling.

I poked through the debris. Most of our possessions were lost — washed away. The shelter had been a mean thing, and our few belongings mere shards of improvisation and repair; but it had been our home — and I felt a shocking sense of violation.

“What of the device?” Nebogipfel asked me, turning his blinded face this way and that. “The Time-Car — what of it?”

After some digging about, I found a few struts and tubes and plates, bits of battered gun-metal now even more twisted and damaged than before; but the bulk of the car had been swept into the Sea. Nebogipfel fingered the fragments, his eyes closed. “Well,” he said, “well, this will have to do.”

And he sat down on the sand and cast about blindly for bits of cloth and vine, and he began the patient construction of his time-device once more.