I crammed my knapsack with all the matches I could find in the house — in fact I dispatched Hillyer to the tobacconist’s to purchase more boxes. I packed in camphor, and candles, and, on an impulse, a length of sturdy twine, in case, stranded, I should need to make new candles of my own. (I had little conception of how one goes about such manufacture, incidentally, but in the bright light of that optimistic morning I did not doubt my ability to improvise.)

I took white spirit, salves, some quinine tabloids, and a roll of bandage. I had no gun — I doubt if I should have taken it even if I had possessed one, for what use is a gun when its ammunition is exhausted? — but I slipped my clasp-knife into my pocket. I packed up a roll of tools — a screwdriver, several sizes of spanner, a small hacksaw with spare blades — as well as a range of screws and lengths of nickel, brass and quartz bars. I was determined that no trivial accident befalling the Time Machine should strand me in any disjointed future, for want of a bit of brass: despite my transient plan to build a new Time Machine when my original was stolen by the Morlocks in 802,701, I’d seen no evidence in the decayed Upper-world that I should be able to find the materials to repair so much as a sheared screw. Of course the Morlocks had retained some mechanical aptitude, but I did not relish the prospect of being forced to negotiate with those bleached worms for the sake of a couple of bolts.

I found my Kodak, and dug out my flash trough. The camera was new loaded with a roll of a hundred negative frames on a paper-stripping roll. I remembered how damned expensive the thing had seemed when I had bought it no less than twenty-five dollars, purchased on a trip to New York — but, if I should return with pictures of futurity, each of those two-inch frames would be more valuable than the finest paintings.