Just for a moment the Doctor tried to realise that he was looking upon the supreme marvel of human ingenuity. He made an effort to stretch his brain once more in order to grasp the significance of this paragon of eight thousand years hence. But he did not succeed. The strain of the past hour reached its first climax. He began to tremble violently. His elbow went back with a sharp jerk and smashed three bottles standing on the shelf behind him. He made little whimpering noises in his throat.
"Oh, God," he whispered, hoarsely, and then again, as though to comfort himself, "Oh, God."
III
"If you open the lid," explained the Clockwork man (and at the sound of that human voice the doctor jumped violently), "you will see certain stops, marked with numbers."
Obedient, in spite of himself, the Doctor discovered a minute hinge and swung open the glass lid. The palpitating clock, with its stir of noises slightly accentuated, lay exposed to his touch.
"Stop XI," continued the Clockwork man, in tones of sharp instruction. "Press hard. Then wind Y 4 three times."
Slowly, with a wildly beating heart, the Doctor inserted a trembling finger among the interstices of those multitudinous stops and hands, and as slowly withdrew it again. He could not do this thing. For one thing, his finger was too large. It was a ridiculously clumsy instrument for so fine a purpose. What if he failed? Pressed a knob too hard or set a hand spinning in the wrong direction? The least blunder—
"I can't do it," he gasped, "I can't really. You must—excuse me."
"Be quick," said the Clockwork man, in a squeaky undertone, "something is going to happen."
So it came about that the Doctor's final action was hurried and ill-considered. It seemed to him that he must have committed some kind of assault upon the mechanism. Actually, he succeeded in pressing the knob marked XI, and the immediate result was a sort of muffled ringing sound arising from somewhere in the depths of the Clockwork man's organism.