Title of the first draft of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, of which only the opening scenes of the work were ever published.
The story concerns a man named Dr. Moses Nebogipfel who invents a machine, which he calls the Cosmic Argo, that can travel across time as if it were a fourth dimension of space.
As Dr. Nebogipfel explains the uses of the machine to his minister, the villagers, playing into stereotypical mob-mentality, attack the doctor's house under the assumption that he is practicing witchcraft. Dr. Nebogipfel jumps into the Cosmic Argo and escapes the pitchfork-wielding mob by travelling into the future.
The scene ends with Dr. Nebogipfel returning to the present in a different section of town, bloody and battered, and briefly explaining to a stranger his perilous adventure, before jumping into his time machine and going back to the future.
Wells never published the details of Dr. Nebogipfel's journey.