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| Title: The War of the Worlds |
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| Author: H. G. Wells [Herbert George] |
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| Official Release Date: July, 1992 [Etext #36] |
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| Edition: 12 |
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| Language: English |
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| |
| The War of the Worlds |
| |
| by H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells [1898] |
| |
| But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be |
| inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the |
| World? . . . And how are all things made for man?-- |
| KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy) |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| BOOK ONE |
| |
| THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER ONE |
| |
| THE EVE OF THE WAR |
| |
| |
| No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth |
| century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by |
| intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as |
| men busied themslves about their various concerns they were |
| scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a |
| microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and |
| multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to |
| and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their |
| assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the |
| infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to |
| the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of |
| them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or |
| improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of |
| those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be |
| other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to |
| welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds |
| that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, |
| intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with |
| envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And |
| early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. |
| |
| The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the |
| sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it |
| receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. |
| It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our |
| world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its |
| surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one |
| seventh of the vlume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling |
| to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water |
| and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. |
| |
| Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, |
| up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that |
| intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, |
| beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since |
| Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the |
| superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that |
| it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end. |
| |
| The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has |
| already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is |
| still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial |
| region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest |
| winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have |
| shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow |
| seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and |
| periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of |
| exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a |
| present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate |
| pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their |
| powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with |
| instruments, and intlligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, |
| they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of |
| them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with |
| vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of |
| fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad |
| stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. |
| |
| And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them |
| at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The |
| intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant |
| struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief |
| of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and |
| this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they |
| regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, |
| their only escape from the destruction that, generation after |
| generation, creeps upon them. |
| |
| And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what |
| ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only |
| upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its |
| inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, |
| were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged |
| by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such |
| apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same |
| sirit? |
| |
| The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing |
| subtlety--their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of |
| ours--and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh |
| perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have |
| seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men |
| like Schiaparelli watched the red planet--it is odd, by-the-bye, that |
| for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war--but failed to |
| interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so |
| well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready. |
| |
| During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the |
| illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by |
| Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard |
| of it first in the issue of NATURE dated August 2. I am inclined to |
| think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in |
| the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired |
| at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site |
| of that outbreak during the next two oppositions. |
| |
| The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached |
| opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange |
| palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of |
| incandescent gas upon the panet. It had ocurred towards midnight of |
| the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, |
| indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an |
| enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become |
| invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal |
| puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as |
| flaming gases rushed out of a gun." |
| |
| A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there |
| was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the DAILY |
| TELEGRAPH, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest |
| dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of |
| the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, |
| at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess |
| of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a |
| scrutiny of the red planet. |
| |
| In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that |
| vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed |
| lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the |
| steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in |
| the roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. |
| Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the |
| telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet |
| swimming in the field. It semed such a little thing, so bright and |
| small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly |
| flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery |
| warm--a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this |
| was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that |
| kept the planet in view. |
| |
| As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to |
| advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty |
| millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of |
| void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust |
| of the material universe swims. |
| |
| Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, |
| three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the |
| unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness |
| looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far |
| profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, |
| flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible |
| distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, |
| came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so |
| much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of |
| it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring |
| missile. |
| |
| That night, too, there was anoher jetting out of gas from the |
| distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest |
| projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and |
| at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I |
| was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way |
| in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while |
| Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us. |
| |
| That night another invisible missile started on its way to the |
| earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the |
| first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, |
| with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I |
| had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute |
| gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy |
| watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and |
| walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw |
| and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace. |
| |
| He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, |
| and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were |
| signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a |
| heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in |
| progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic |
| evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. |
| |
| "The chances against anything manike on Mars are a million to |
| one," he said. |
| |
| Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after |
| about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a |
| flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on |
| earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing |
| caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, |
| visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, |
| fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's |
| atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. |
| |
| Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and |
| popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the |
| volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical PUNCH, I remember, |
| made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all |
| unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew |
| earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the |
| empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. |
| It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift |
| fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they |
| did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph |
| of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. |
| People in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and |
| enterprise of our ninteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was |
| much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series |
| of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as |
| civilisation progressed. |
| |
| One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been |
| 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was |
| starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed |
| out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so |
| many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a |
| party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing |
| and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the |
| houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the |
| distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, |
| softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to |
| me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging |
| in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER TWO |
| |
| THE FALLING STAR |
| |
| Then came the night of the frst falling star. It was seen early |
| in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high |
| in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an |
| ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish |
| streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest |
| authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first |
| appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him |
| that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him. |
| |
| I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my |
| French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I |
| loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. |
| Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer |
| space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I |
| only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it |
| travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many |
| people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of |
| it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. |
| No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night. |
| |
| But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the |
| shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on |
| the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the |
| idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from |
| the sand pits. An enormous hle had been made by the impact of the |
| projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every |
| direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half |
| away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose |
| against the dawn. |
| |
| The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the |
| scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its |
| descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, |
| caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured |
| incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached |
| the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most |
| meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, |
| still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near |
| approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the |
| unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred |
| to him that it might be hollow. |
| |
| He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made |
| for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at |
| its unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some |
| evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully |
| still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, |
| was already warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, |
| there ws certanly no breeze stiring, and the only sounds were the |
| faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on |
| the common. |
| |
| Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey |
| clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling |
| off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and |
| raining down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell |
| with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth. |
| |
| For a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and, although |
| the heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the |
| bulk to see the Thing more clearly. He fancied even then that the |
| cooling of the body might account for this, but what disturbed that |
| idea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the |
| cylinder. |
| |
| And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the |
| cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement |
| that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had |
| been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the |
| circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated, |
| until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk |
| forward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The |
| clinder was artificial--holow--with an end that scrwed out! |
| Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top! |
| |
| "Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in it--men in it! Half |
| roasted to death! Trying to escape!" |
| |
| At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the |
| flash upon Mars. |
| |
| The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he |
| forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. But |
| luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands |
| on the still-glowing metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment, |
| then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into |
| Woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock. He |
| met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told |
| and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the pit-- |
| that the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the |
| potman who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell |
| Bridge. The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an |
| unsuccessful attempt to shut him into the taproom. That sobered him a |
| little; and when he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his |
| garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood. |
| |
| "Hederson," he called, "yousaw that shooting star last night?" |
| |
| "Well?" said Henderson. |
| |
| "It's out on Horsell Common now." |
| |
| "Good Lord!" said Henderson. "Fallen meteorite! That's good." |
| |
| "But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder--an |
| artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside." |
| |
| Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand. |
| |
| "What's that?" he said. He was deaf in one ear. |
| |
| Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a minute or so |
| taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and |
| came out into the road. The two men hurried back at once to the |
| common, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But |
| now the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal |
| showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either |
| entering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound. |
| |
| They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, |
| meeting with nwtho response, they both concluded the man or men inside |
| must be insensible or dead. |
| |
| Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They shouted |
| consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get |
| help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and |
| disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just |
| as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were |
| opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway |
| station at once, in order to telegraph the news to London. The |
| newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the |
| idea. |
| |
| By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already |
| started for the common to see the "dead men from Mars." That was the |
| form the story took. I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about |
| a quarter to nine when I went out to get my DAILY CHRONICLE. I was |
| naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the |
| Ottershaw bridge to the sand pits. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER THREE |
| |
| ON HORSELL COMMON |
| |
| I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the |
| huge hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the |
| appearance of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. The turf |
| and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No |
| doubt its impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy |
| were not there. I think they perceived that nothing was to be done |
| for the present, and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson's house. |
| |
| There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with |
| their feet dangling, and amusing themselves--until I stopped them--by |
| throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about |
| it, they began playing at "touch" in and out of the group of |
| bystanders. |
| |
| Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I |
| employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his |
| little boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were |
| accustomed to hang about the railway station. There was very little |
| talking. Few of the common people in England had anything but the |
| vaguest astronomical ideas in those days. Most of them were staring |
| quietly at the big table like end of the cylinder, which was still as |
| Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I fancy the popular expectation of |
| a heap of of charred corpses was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. |
| Some went away while I was there, and other people came. I clambered |
| into the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet. The |
| top had certainly ceased to rotate. |
| |
| It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of |
| this object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was |
| really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown |
| across the road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas |
| float. It required a certain amount of scientific education to |
| perceive that the grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that |
| the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid |
| and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. "Extra-terrestrial" had no |
| meaning for most of the onlookers. |
| |
| At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had |
| come from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it |
| contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be |
| automatic. In spite of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men |
| in Mars. My mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its |
| containing manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might |
| arise, whether we should find coins and models in it, and so forth. |
| Yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an |
| impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed |
| happening, I waked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury. |
| But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract |
| investigations. |
| |
| In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very |
| much. The early editions of the evening papers had startled London |
| with enormous headlines: |
| |
| "A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS." |
| |
| "REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING," |
| |
| and so forth. In addition, Ogilvy's wire to the Astronomical Exchange |
| had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms. |
| |
| There were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station |
| standing in the road by the sand pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham, |
| and a rather lordly carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of |
| bicycles. In addition, a large number of people must have walked, in |
| spite of the heat of the day, from Woking and Chertsey, so that there |
| was altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily dressed |
| ladies among the others. |
| |
| It was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, |
| and the only sadow was that of the few scattered pine trees. The |
| burning heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards |
| Ottershaw was blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off |
| vertical streamers of smoke. An enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in |
| the Chobham Road had sent up his son with a barrow-load of green |
| apples and ginger beer. |
| |
| Going to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a group of |
| about half a dozen men--Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man |
| that I afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with |
| several workmen wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving |
| directions in a clear, high-pitched voice. He was standing on the |
| cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson |
| and streaming with perspiration, and something seemed to have |
| irritated him. |
| |
| A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its |
| lower end was still embedded. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the |
| staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and |
| asked me if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of |
| the manor. |
| |
| The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to |
| their excavations, especially the boys. They wanted a light railing |
| put up, and help to keep the pexople back. He told me that a faint |
| stirring was occasionally still audible within the case, but that the |
| workmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them. |
| The case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the |
| faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior. |
| |
| I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the |
| privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure. I failed to |
| find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from |
| London by the six o'clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then |
| about a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to |
| the station to waylay him. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FOUR |
| |
| THE CYLINDER OPENS |
| |
| When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups |
| were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons |
| were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out |
| black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, |
| perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared |
| to be going on aout the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my |
| mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent's voice: |
| |
| "Keep back! Keep back!" |
| |
| A boy came running towards me. |
| |
| "It's a-movin'," he said to me as he passed; "a-screwin' and a- |
| screwin' out. I don't like it. I'm a-goin' 'ome, I am." |
| |
| I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or |
| three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two |
| ladies there being by no means the least active. |
| |
| "He's fallen in the pit!" cried some one. |
| |
| "Keep back!" said several. |
| |
| The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one |
| seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the |
| pit. |
| |
| "I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We don't know |
| what's in the confounded thing, you know!" |
| |
| I saw a yoxung man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was, |
| standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again. |
| The crowd had pushed him in. |
| |
| The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly |
| two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, |
| and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I |
| turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of |
| the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck |
| my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the |
| Thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. |
| I had the sunset in my eyes. |
| |
| I think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly something a |
| little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know |
| I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the |
| shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two |
| luminous disks--like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey |
| snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the |
| writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another. |
| |
| A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman |
| behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still, |
| from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my |
| way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astoxnishment giving place to |
| horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate |
| exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I |
| saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found |
| myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running |
| off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and |
| ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring. |
| |
| A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was |
| rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and |
| caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. |
| |
| Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The |
| mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, |
| one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless |
| brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole |
| creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular |
| appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air. |
| |
| Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the |
| strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with |
| its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a |
| chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this |
| mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the |
| lungs in a stange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness |
| of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth-- |
| above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at |
| once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was |
| something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy |
| deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this |
| first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and |
| dread. |
| |
| Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the |
| cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great |
| mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith |
| another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the |
| aperture. |
| |
| I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, |
| perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for |
| I could not avert my face from these things. |
| |
| There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped, |
| panting, and waited further developments. The common round the sand |
| pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated |
| terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at |
| the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a renewed |
| horror, I saw a round, black obect bobbing up and down on the edge of |
| the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but |
| showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now he |
| got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until |
| only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have |
| fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to |
| go back and help him that my fears overruled. |
| |
| Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the |
| heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming |
| along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the |
| sight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more |
| standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, |
| behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in |
| short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of |
| sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black |
| against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted |
| vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the |
| ground. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FIVE |
| |
| TE HEAT-RAY |
| |
| After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the |
| cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind |
| of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in |
| the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground |
| of fear and curiosity. |
| |
| I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate |
| longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve, |
| seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand |
| heaps that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin |
| black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset |
| and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, |
| joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a |
| wobbling motion. What could be going on there? |
| |
| Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a |
| little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the |
| direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict. There |
| were few near me. One man I approached--he was, I perceived, a |
| neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name--and accosted. But |
| it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation. |
| |
| "What ugly brues!" he said. "Good God! What ugly brutes!" He |
| repeated this over and over again. |
| |
| "Did you see a man in the pit?" I said; but he made no answer to |
| that. We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side, |
| deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. Then I |
| shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a |
| yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was |
| walking towards Woking. |
| |
| The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The |
| crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I |
| heard now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards |
| Chobham dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from |
| the pit. |
| |
| It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I |
| suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore |
| confidence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent |
| movement upon the sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather |
| force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained |
| unbroken. Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance, |
| stop, watch, and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin |
| irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated |
| horns. I, too, on my side begazn to move towards the pit. |
| |
| Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand |
| pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a |
| lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards |
| of the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little |
| black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag. |
| |
| This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and |
| since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, |
| intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by |
| approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent. |
| |
| Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the |
| left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards |
| I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this |
| attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance |
| dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost |
| complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed |
| it at discreet distances. |
| |
| Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous |
| greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which |
| drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air. |
| |
| This smok (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was |
| so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of |
| brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to |
| darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after |
| their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became |
| audible. |
| |
| Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag |
| at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small |
| vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, |
| their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. |
| Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, |
| droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the |
| ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it. |
| |
| Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one |
| to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some |
| invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was |
| as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire. |
| |
| Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering |
| and falling, and their supporters turning to run. |
| |
| I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping |
| from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it |
| was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of |
| light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft |
| of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry |
| furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away |
| towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden |
| buildings suddenly set alight. |
| |
| It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, |
| this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming |
| towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded |
| and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits |
| and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then |
| it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn |
| through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a |
| curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. |
| Something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from |
| Woking station opens out on the common. Forth-with the hissing and |
| humming ceased, and the black, dome-like object sank slowly out of |
| sight into the pit. |
| |
| All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood |
| motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that |
| death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in |
| my srprise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me |
| suddenly dark and unfamiliar. |
| |
| The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except |
| where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the |
| early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the |
| stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, |
| bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the |
| roofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the western |
| afterglow. The Martians and their appliances were altogether |
| invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror |
| wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and |
| glowed still, and the houses towards Woking station were sending up |
| spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air. |
| |
| Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The |
| little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out |
| of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, |
| had scarcely been broken. |
| |
| It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless, |
| unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from |
| without, came--fear. |
| |
| With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the |
| heather. |
| |
| The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only |
| of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an |
| extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping |
| silently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to |
| look back. |
| |
| I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being |
| played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, |
| this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap |
| after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SIX |
| |
| THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD |
| |
| It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay |
| men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are |
| able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute |
| non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam |
| against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic |
| mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a |
| lighthouse projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved |
| these details. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat |
| is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of |
| visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its |
| touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, |
| and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam. |
| |
| That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the |
| pit, charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the |
| common from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze. |
| |
| The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and |
| Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the shops had closed when |
| the tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so |
| forth, attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the |
| Horsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at |
| last upon the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up |
| after the labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would |
| make any novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a |
| trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices |
| along the road in the gloaming. . . . |
| |
| As yet, of course, few people in Woing even knew that the cylinder |
| had opened, though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to |
| the post office with a special wire to an evening paper. |
| |
| As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they |
| found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the |
| spinning mirror over the sand pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt, |
| soon infected by the excitement of the occasion. |
| |
| By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may |
| have been a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place, |
| besides those who had left the road to approach the Martians nearer. |
| There were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their |
| best, under instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter |
| them from approaching the cylinder. There was some booing from those |
| more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an |
| occasion for noise and horse-play. |
| |
| Stent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, |
| had telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians |
| emerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these |
| strange creatures from violence. After that they returned to lead that |
| ill-fated advance. The description of their death, as it was seen by |
| the crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three |
| puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of flame. |
| |
| But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only |
| the fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of |
| the Heat-Ray saved them. Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror |
| been a few yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale. They |
| saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were, |
| lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. Then, |
| with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit, the beam |
| swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees |
| that line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows, |
| firing the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a |
| portion of the gable of the house nearest the corner. |
| |
| In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees, the |
| panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for some |
| moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and |
| single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then |
| came a crying from the common. There were shrieks and shouts, and |
| suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with |
| his hands clasped over his head, screaming. |
| |
| "They're coming!" a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was |
| turning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to |
| Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep. |
| Where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd |
| jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not |
| escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were |
| crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the |
| darkness. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SEVEN |
| |
| HOW I REACHED HOME |
| |
| For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress |
| of blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather. All |
| about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless |
| sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before |
| it descended and smote me out of life. I came into the road between |
| the crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads. |
| |
| At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the violence of |
| my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside. |
| That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. I |
| fell and lay still. |
| |
| I must have remained there some time. |
| |
| I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not |
| clearly understand how I came there. My terror had fallen from me |
| like a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from |
| its fastener. A few minutes before, there had only been three real |
| things before me--the immensity of the night and space and nature, my |
| own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it |
| was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered |
| abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to |
| the other. I was immediately the self of every day again--a decent, |
| ordinary citizen. The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the |
| starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream. I asked myself |
| had these latter things indeed happened? I could not credit it. |
| |
| I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My |
| mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their |
| strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the |
| arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside |
| him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was |
| minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a |
| meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge. |
| |
| Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit |
| smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying south-- |
| clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of people |
| talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row of |
| gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real and so |
| familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such |
| things, I told myself, could not be. |
| |
| Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my |
| experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of |
| detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all |
| from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, |
| out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling |
| was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my |
| dream. |
| |
| But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the |
| swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise of |
| business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. I |
| stopped at the group of people. |
| |
| "What news from the common?" said I. |
| |
| There were two men and a woman at the gate. |
| |
| "Eh?" said one of the men, turning. |
| |
| "What news from the common?" I said. |
| |
| "'Ain't yer just BEEN there?" asked the men. |
| |
| "People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman over the |
| gate. "What's it all abart?" |
| |
| "Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the creatures |
| from Mars?" |
| |
| "Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks"; and all |
| three of them laughed. |
| |
| I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them |
| what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences. |
| |
| "You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home. |
| |
| I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into |
| the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could |
| collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The |
| dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained |
| neglected on the table while I told my story. |
| |
| "There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had aroused; |
| "they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl. They may keep the |
| pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. |
| . . . But the horror of them!" |
| |
| "Don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her |
| hand on mine. |
| |
| "Poor Ogilvy!" I said. "To think he may be lying dead there!" |
| |
| My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw |
| how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly. |
| |
| "They may come here," she said again and again. |
| |
| I pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her. |
| |
| "They can scarcely move," I said. |
| |
| I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had |
| told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves |
| on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational |
| difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three |
| times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would |
| weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength |
| would be the same. His own body would be a cope of lead to him. That, |
| indeed, was the general opinion. Both THE TIMES and the DAILY |
| TELEGRAPH, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both |
| overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences. |
| |
| The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen |
| or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars. |
| The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians |
| indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their |
| bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that |
| such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able |
| to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch. |
| |
| But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my |
| reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine and |
| food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring |
| my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure. |
| |
| "They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my wineglass. |
| "They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. |
| Perhaps they expected to find no living things--certainly no |
| intelligent living things." |
| |
| "A shell in the pit" said I, "if the worst comes to the worst will |
| kill them all." |
| |
| The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my |
| perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner |
| table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet |
| anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white |
| cloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days |
| even philosophical writers had many little luxuries--the crimson- |
| purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of |
| it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's |
| rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians. |
| |
| So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in |
| his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless |
| sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, |
| my dear." |
| |
| I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to |
| eat for very many strange and terrible days. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER EIGHT |
| |
| FRIDAY NIGHT |
| |
| The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and |
| wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing |
| of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first |
| beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social |
| order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses |
| and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand |
| pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless |
| it were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or |
| London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were |
| at all affected by the new-comers. Many people had heard of the |
| cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it |
| certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany |
| would have done. |
| |
| In London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing the |
| gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his |
| evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving |
| no reply--the man was killed--decided not to print a special edition. |
| |
| Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were |
| inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to |
| whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping; |
| working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were |
| being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes love- |
| making, students sat over their books. |
| |
| Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and |
| dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, |
| or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of |
| excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most |
| part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on |
| as it had done for countless years--as though no planet Mars existed |
| in the sky. Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was |
| the case. |
| |
| In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and |
| going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were |
| alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most |
| ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching on Smith's monopoly, was |
| selling papers with the afternoon's news. The ringing impact of |
| trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled |
| with their shouts of "Men from Mars!" Excited men came into the |
| station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more |
| disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling |
| Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and |
| saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the |
| direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving |
| across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath |
| fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the common that any |
| disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas burning |
| on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the |
| common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake |
| till dawn. |
| |
| A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but |
| the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or |
| two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness |
| and crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now |
| and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept |
| the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that |
| big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay |
| about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise |
| of hammering from the pit was heard by many people. |
| |
| So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre, |
| sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, |
| was this cyinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around |
| it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few |
| dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. |
| Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of |
| excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not |
| crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still |
| flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that |
| would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, |
| had still to develop. |
| |
| All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, |
| indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and |
| ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the |
| starlit sky. |
| |
| About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and |
| deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a |
| second company marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of |
| the common. Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on |
| the common earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be |
| missing. The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and |
| was busy questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities |
| were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. About |
| eleven, the next morning's papers were able to say, a squadron of |
| hussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan |
| regiment started from Aldershot. |
| |
| A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, |
| Woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the |
| northwest. It had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness |
| like summer lightning. This was the second cylinder. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER NINE |
| |
| THE FIGHTING BEGINS |
| |
| Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of |
| lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating |
| barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in |
| sleeping, and I rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast |
| and stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring |
| but a lark. |
| |
| The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot and I |
| went round to the side gate to ask the latest news. He told me that |
| during the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that |
| guns were expected. Then--a familiar, reassuring note--I heard a train |
| running towards Woking. |
| |
| "They aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can possibly |
| be avoided." |
| |
| I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then |
| strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My |
| neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or |
| to destroy the Martians during the day. |
| |
| "It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he said. "It |
| would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might |
| learn a thing or two." |
| |
| He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for |
| his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. At the same |
| time he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet |
| Golf Links. |
| |
| "They say," said he, "that there's another of those blessed things |
| fallen there--number two. But one's enough, surely. This lot'll cost |
| the insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled." He |
| laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this. The |
| woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to |
| me. "They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick |
| soil of pine needles and turf," he said, and then grew serious over |
| "poor Ogilvy." |
| |
| After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards |
| the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers-- |
| sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets |
| unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots |
| coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal, |
| and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the |
| Cardigan men standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers |
| for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous |
| evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the |
| vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. They |
| said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the |
| troops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. |
| The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common |
| soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible |
| fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they |
| began to argue among themselves. |
| |
| "Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one. |
| |
| "Get aht!," said another. "What's cover against this 'ere 'eat? |
| Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the |
| ground'll let us, and then drive a trench." |
| |
| "Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha' |
| been born a rabbit Snippy." |
| |
| "Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly--a little, |
| contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe. |
| |
| I repeated my description. |
| |
| "Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers |
| of men--fighters of fish it is this time!" |
| |
| "It ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first |
| speaker. |
| |
| "Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said |
| the little dark man. "You carn tell what they might do." |
| |
| "Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't no |
| time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once." |
| |
| So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to |
| the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could. |
| |
| But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long |
| morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a |
| glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were |
| in the hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed |
| didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I |
| found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the |
| military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the |
| tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The |
| soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and |
| leave their houses. |
| |
| I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the |
| day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took |
| a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the |
| railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had |
| contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, |
| Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn't |
| know. The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They seemed |
| busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost |
| continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently they were busy getting ready |
| for a struggle. "Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without |
| success," was the stereotyped formula of the papers. A sapper told me |
| it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The |
| Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the |
| lowing of a cow. |
| |
| I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this |
| preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became belligerent, |
| and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my |
| schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back. It hardly seemed a |
| fair fight to me at that time. They seemed very helpless in that pit |
| of theirs. |
| |
| About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured |
| intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned that the smouldering |
| pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, |
| in the hope of destroying that object before it opened. It was only |
| about five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham for use against |
| the first body of Martians. |
| |
| About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the |
| summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon |
| us, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately |
| after a gust of firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent |
| rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and, |
| starting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the |
| Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the |
| little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the |
| mosque had vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as |
| if a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it. One of our chimneys |
| cracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came |
| clattering down the tiles and made a heap of broken red fragments upon |
| the flower bed by my study window. |
| |
| I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realised that the crest of |
| Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians' Heat-Ray now that |
| the college was cleared out of the way. |
| |
| At that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out |
| into the road. Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go |
| upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for. |
| |
| "We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the firing |
| reopened for a moment upon the common. |
| |
| "But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror. |
| |
| I thought perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead. |
| |
| "Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise. |
| |
| She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of |
| their houses, astonished. |
| |
| "How are we to get to Leatherhead?" she said. |
| |
| Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway |
| bridge; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College; |
| two others dismounted, and began running from house to house. The |
| sun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the |
| trees, seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon |
| everything. |
| |
| "Stop here," said I; "you are safe here"; and I started off at once |
| for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart. |
| I ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the |
| hill would be moving. I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what |
| was going on behind his house. A man stood with his back to me, |
| talking to him. |
| |
| "I must have a pound," said the landlord, "and I've no one to drive |
| it." |
| |
| "I'll give you two," said I, over the stranger's shoulder. |
| |
| "What for?" |
| |
| "And I'll bring it back by midnight," I said. |
| |
| "Lord!" said the landlord; "what's the hurry? I'm selling my bit |
| of a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What's going on now?" |
| |
| I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the |
| dog cart. At the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the |
| landlord should leave his. I took care to have the cart there and |
| then, drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife |
| and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such |
| plate as we had, and so forth. The beech trees below the house were |
| burning while I did this, and the palings up the road glowed red. |
| While I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came |
| running up. He was going from house to house, warning people to |
| leave. He was going on as I came out of my front door, lugging my |
| treasures, done up in a tablecloth. I shouted after him: |
| |
| "What news?" |
| |
| He turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out in a thing |
| like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest. |
| A sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a |
| moment. I ran to my neighbour's door and rapped to satisfy myself of |
| what I already knew, that his wife had gone to London with him and had |
| locked up their house. I went in again, according to my promise, to |
| get my servant's box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail |
| of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into the |
| driver's seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of the |
| smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill |
| towards Old Woking. |
| |
| In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either |
| side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw |
| the doctor's cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my |
| head to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick streamers of black |
| smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still |
| air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. The |
| smoke already extended far away to the east and west--to the Byfleet |
| pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted |
| with people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct |
| through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that |
| was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles. |
| Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range |
| of their Heat-Ray. |
| |
| I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my |
| attention to the horse. When I looked back again the second hill had |
| hidden the black smoke. I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave |
| him a loose rein until Woking and Send lay between us and that |
| quivering tumult. I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and |
| Send. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER TEN |
| |
| IN THE STORM |
| |
| Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of |
| hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the |
| hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses. |
| The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down |
| Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very |
| peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about |
| nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper |
| with my cousins and commended my wife to their care. |
| |
| My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed |
| oppressed with foxrebodings of evil. I talked to her reassuringly, |
| pointing out that the Martians were tied to the Pit by sheer |
| heaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but |
| she answered only in monosyllables. Had it not been for my promise to |
| the innkeeper, she would, I think, have urged me to stay in |
| Leatherhead that night. Would that I had! Her face, I remember, was |
| very white as we parted. |
| |
| For my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day. Something |
| very like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised |
| community had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very |
| sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night. I was even afraid |
| that that last fusillade I had heard might mean the extermination of |
| our invaders from Mars. I can best express my state of mind by saying |
| that I wanted to be in at the death. |
| |
| It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night was |
| unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted passage of my |
| cousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as |
| the day. Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath |
| stirred the shrubs about us. My cousins' man lit both lamps. Happily, |
| I knew the road intimately. My wife stood in the light of the |
| doorway, and watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then |
| abruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side |
| wishing me good hap. |
| |
| I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife's |
| fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians. At that |
| time I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's |
| fighting. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated |
| the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I |
| returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western |
| horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the |
| sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there |
| with masses of black and red smoke. |
| |
| Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so |
| the village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly escaped an |
| accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people |
| stood with their backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I |
| do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill, |
| nor do I know if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping |
| securely, or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the |
| terror of the night. |
| |
| From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the |
| Wey, and the red glare was hidden from me. As I ascended the little |
| hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the |
| trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that |
| was upon me. Then I heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford Church |
| behind me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its |
| tree-tops and roofs black and sharp against the red. |
| |
| Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and |
| showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt a tug at the |
| reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a |
| thread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling |
| into the field to my left. It was the third falling star! |
| |
| Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced |
| out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst |
| like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth and |
| bolted. |
| |
| A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down |
| this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as |
| rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps, |
| treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling |
| accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric |
| machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The flickering |
| light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my |
| face as I drove down the slope. |
| |
| At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then |
| abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving |
| rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it |
| for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it |
| to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision--a moment of |
| bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red |
| masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of |
| the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp |
| and bright. |
| |
| And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, |
| higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and |
| smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering |
| metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel |
| dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling |
| with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, |
| heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear |
| almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards |
| nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently |
| along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. |
| But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on |
| a tripod stand. |
| |
| Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, |
| as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were |
| snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, |
| rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard |
| to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went |
| altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head |
| hard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled |
| over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung |
| sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water. |
| |
| I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in |
| the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck |
| was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black |
| bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still |
| spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went |
| striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford. |
| |
| Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere |
| insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing |
| metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which |
| gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange |
| body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen |
| hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable |
| suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge |
| mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of |
| green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster |
| swept by me. And in an instant it was gone. |
| |
| So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the |
| lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows. |
| |
| As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the |
| thunder--"Aloo! Aloo!"--and in another minute it was with its |
| companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I |
| have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten |
| cylinders they had fired at us from Mars. |
| |
| For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by |
| the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about |
| in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning, |
| and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into |
| clearness again. Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the |
| night swallowed them up. |
| |
| I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some |
| time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to |
| a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril. |
| |
| Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood, |
| surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled to my feet at |
| last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a |
| run for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people |
| hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I desisted, |
| and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, |
| succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into |
| the pine woods towards Maybury. |
| |
| Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my |
| own house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It |
| was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming |
| infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in |
| columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage. |
| |
| If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I |
| should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street |
| Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that |
| night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical |
| wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin, |
| deafened and blinded by the storm. |
| |
| I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as |
| much motive as I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a |
| ditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out |
| into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, |
| for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy |
| torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me |
| reeling back. |
| |
| He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I |
| could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the |
| stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to |
| win my way up the hill. I went close up to the fence on the left and |
| worked my way along its palings. |
| |
| Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of |
| lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair |
| of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the |
| flicker of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next |
| flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not |
| shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay |
| crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung violently |
| against it. |
| |
| Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before |
| touched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his |
| heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The |
| lightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I |
| sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose |
| conveyance I had taken. |
| |
| I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my |
| way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house. |
| Nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there |
| still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up |
| against the drenching hail. So far as I could see by the flashes, the |
| houses about me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a dark |
| heap lay in the road. |
| |
| Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the |
| sound of feet, but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them. I |
| let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, |
| staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down. My imagination |
| was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body |
| smashed against the fence. |
| |
| I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, |
| shivering violently. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER ELEVEN |
| |
| AT THE WINDOW |
| |
| I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of |
| exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that I was cold and |
| wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I |
| got up almost mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some |
| whiskey, and then I was moved to change my clothes. |
| |
| After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so |
| I do not know. The window of my study looks over the trees and the |
| railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this |
| window had been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with |
| the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed |
| impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway. |
| |
| The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College |
| and the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a |
| vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across |
| the light huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to |
| and fro. |
| |
| It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on |
| fire--a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and |
| writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red |
| reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of |
| smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid |
| the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the |
| clear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied |
| upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of |
| it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous |
| tang of burning was in the air. |
| |
| I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I |
| did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the |
| houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and |
| blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the |
| hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along |
| the Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. |
| The light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black |
| heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow |
| oblongs. Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part |
| smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails. |
| |
| Between these three main centres of light--the houses, the train, |
| and the burning county towards Chobham--stretched irregular patches of |
| dark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and |
| smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set |
| with fire. It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries |
| at night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I |
| peered intently for them. Later I saw against the light of Woking |
| station a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across |
| the line. |
| |
| And this was the little world in which I had been living securely |
| for years, this fiery chaos! What had happened in the last seven |
| hours I still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to |
| guess, the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish |
| lumps I had seen disgorged from the cylinder. With a queer feeling of |
| impersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, |
| and stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three |
| gigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare about |
| the sand pits. |
| |
| They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could |
| be. Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing I felt was |
| impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, |
| using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to |
| compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time |
| in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an |
| intelligent lower animal. |
| |
| The storm had left the sky clear, and ovxer the smoke of the burning |
| land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west, |
| when a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the |
| fence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I |
| looked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings. At the |
| sight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the |
| window eagerly. |
| |
| "Hist!" said I, in a whisper. |
| |
| He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came over and |
| across the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent down and stepped |
| softly. |
| |
| "Who's there?" he said, also whispering, standing under the window |
| and peering up. |
| |
| "Where are you going?" I asked. |
| |
| "God knows." |
| |
| "Are you trying to hide?" |
| |
| "That's it." |
| |
| "Come into the house," I said. |
| |
| I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the |
| door again. I could not see his face. He was hatless, and his coat |
| was unbuttoned. |
| |
| "My God!" he said, as I drew him in. |
| |
| "What has happened?" I asked. |
| |
| "What hasn't?" In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of |
| despair. "They wiped us out--simply wiped us out," he repeated again |
| and again. |
| |
| He followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room. |
| |
| "Take some whiskey," I said, pouring out a stiff dose. |
| |
| He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his |
| head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a |
| perfect passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of |
| my own recent despair, stood beside him, wondering. |
| |
| It was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my |
| questions, and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. He was a |
| driver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven. At |
| that time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the |
| first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second |
| cylinder under cover of a metal shield. |
| |
| Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first |
| of the fighting-machines I had seen. The gun he drove had been |
| unlimbered near Horsell, in order to command the sand pits, and its |
| arrival it was that had precipitated the action. As the limber |
| gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came |
| down, throwing him into a depression of the ground. At the same |
| moment the gun exploded behind him, the ammunition blew up, there was |
| fire all about him, and he found himself lying under a heap of charred |
| dead men and dead horses. |
| |
| "I lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore |
| quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell-- |
| good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of |
| the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like |
| parade it had been a minute before--then stumble, bang, swish!" |
| |
| "Wiped out!" he said. |
| |
| He had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out |
| furtively across the common. The Cardigan men had tried a rush, in |
| skirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence. |
| Then the monster had risen to its feet and had begun to walk leisurely |
| to and fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its |
| headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human |
| being. A kind of arm carried a complicated metallic case, about which |
| green flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked |
| the Heat-Ray. |
| |
| In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a |
| living thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it |
| that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. The hussars |
| had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw |
| nothing of them. He heard the Martians rattle for a time and then |
| become still. The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses |
| until the last; then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear, and |
| the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing shut off the |
| Heat-Ray, and turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle |
| away towards the smouldering pine woods that sheltered the second |
| cylinder. As it did so a second glittering Titan built itself up out |
| of the pit. |
| |
| The second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman |
| began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards |
| Horsell. He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the |
| road, and so escaped to Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. |
| The place was impassable. It seems there were a few people alive |
| there, frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded. He was |
| turned aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of |
| broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw this one |
| pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock |
| his head against the trunk of a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, |
| the artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway |
| embankment. |
| |
| Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury, in the hope |
| of getting out of danger Londonward. People were hiding in trenches |
| and cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards Woking |
| village and Send. He had been consumed with thirst until he found one |
| of the water mains near the railway arch smashed, and the water |
| bubbling out like a spring upon the road. |
| |
| That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer |
| telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen. He had |
| eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I |
| found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the |
| room. We lit no lamp for fear of attracting the Martians, and ever |
| and again our hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked, |
| things about us came darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled |
| bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct. It |
| would seem that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn. |
| I began to see his face, blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine was |
| also. |
| |
| When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, |
| and I looked again out of the open window. In one night the valley |
| had become a valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled now. Where |
| flames had been there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless |
| ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees |
| that the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the |
| pitiless light of dawn. Yet here and there some object had had the |
| luck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse |
| there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the history |
| of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal. |
| And shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic |
| giants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were |
| surveying the desolation they had made. |
| |
| It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again |
| puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the |
| brightening dawn--streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished. |
| |
| Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They became pillars |
| of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER TWELVE |
| |
| WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION |
| |
| OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON |
| |
| As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we |
| had watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs. |
| |
| The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay |
| in. He proposed, he said, to make his way Londonward, and thence |
| rejoin his battery--No. 12, of the Horse Artillery. My plan was to |
| return at once to Leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of the |
| Martians impressed me that I had determined to take my wife to |
| Newhaven, and go with her out of the country forthwith. For I already |
| perceived clearly that the country about London must inevitably be the |
| scene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures as these could be |
| destroyed. |
| |
| Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with |
| its guarding giants. Had I been alone, I think I should have taken my |
| chance and struck across country. But the artilleryman dissuaded me: |
| "It's no kindness to the right sort of wife," he said, "to make her a |
| widow"; and in the end I agreed to go with him, under cover of the |
| woods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him. |
| Thence I would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead. |
| |
| I should have started at once, but my companion had been in active |
| service and he knew better than that. He made me ransack the house |
| for a flask, which he filled with whiskey; and we lined every |
| available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. Then we |
| crept out of the house, and ran as quickly as we could down the ill- |
| made road by which I had come overnight. The houses seemed deserted. |
| In the road lay a group of three charred bodies close together, struck |
| dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were things that people had |
| dropped--a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor |
| valuables. At the corner turning up towards the post office a little |
| cart, filled with boxes and furniture, and horseless, heeled over on a |
| broken wheel. A cash box had been hastily smashed open and thrown |
| under the debris. |
| |
| Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of |
| the houses had suffered very greatly here. The Heat-Ray had shaved |
| the chimney tops and passed. Yet, save ourselves, there did not seem |
| to be a living soul on Maybury Hill. The majority of the inhabitants |
| had escaped, I suppose, by way of the Old Woking road--the road I had |
| taken when I drove to Leatherhead--or they had hidden. |
| |
| We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now |
| from the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the |
| hill. We pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a |
| soul. The woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened |
| ruins of woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain |
| proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage |
| instead of green. |
| |
| On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees; |
| it had failed to secure its footing. In one place the woodmen had |
| been at work on Saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a |
| clearing, with heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its engine. |
| Hard by was a temporary hut, deserted. There was not a breath of wind |
| this morning, and everything was strangely still. Even the birds were |
| hushed, and as we hurried along I and the artilleryman talked in |
| whispers and looked now and again over our shoulders. Once or twice |
| we stopped to listen. |
| |
| After a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the |
| clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers |
| riding slowly towards Woking. We hailed them, and they halted while |
| we hurried towards them. It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates |
| of the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the |
| artilleryman told me was a heliograph. |
| |
| "You are the first men I've seen coming this way this morning," |
| said the lieutenant. "What's brewing?" |
| |
| His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared |
| curiously. The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and |
| saluted. |
| |
| "Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying to |
| rejoin battery, sir. You'll come in sight of the Martians, I expect, |
| about half a mile along this road." |
| |
| "What the dickens are they like?" asked the lieutenant. |
| |
| "Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body |
| like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir." |
| |
| "Get out!" said the lieutenant. "What confounded nonsense!" |
| |
| "You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire |
| and strikes you dead." |
| |
| "What d'ye mean--a gun?" |
| |
| "No, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the Heat- |
| Ray. Halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at |
| me. I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road. |
| |
| "It's perfectly true," I said. |
| |
| "Well," said the lieutenant, "I suppose it's my business to see it |
| too. Look here"--to the artilleryman--"we're detailed here clearing |
| people out of their houses. You'd better go along and report yourself |
| to Brigadier-General Marvin, and tell him all you know. He's at |
| Weybridge. Know the way?" |
| |
| "I do," I said; and he turned his horse southward again. |
| |
| "Half a mile, you say?" said he. |
| |
| "At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward. He |
| thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more. |
| |
| Farther along we came upon a group of three women and two children |
| in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage. They had got |
| hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with unclean- |
| looking bundles and shabby furniture. They were all too assiduously |
| engaged to talk to us as we passed. |
| |
| By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the |
| country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight. We were far |
| beyond the range of the Heat-Ray there, and had it not been for the |
| silent desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of |
| packing in others, and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge |
| over the railway and staring down the line towards Woking, the day |
| would have seemed very like any other Sunday. |
| |
| Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road |
| to Addlestone, and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw, across |
| a stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-pounders standing neatly at equal |
| distances pointing towards Woking. The gunners stood by the guns |
| waiting, and the ammunition waggons were at a business-like distance. |
| The men stood almost as if under inspection. |
| |
| "That's good!" said I. "They will get one fair shot, at any rate." |
| |
| The artilleryman hesitated at the gate. |
| |
| "I shall go on," he said. |
| |
| Farther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a |
| number of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart, and |
| more guns behind. |
| |
| "It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," said the |
| artilleryman. "They 'aven't seen that fire-beam yet." |
| |
| The officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over |
| the treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now |
| and again to stare in the same direction. |
| |
| Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, |
| some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about. |
| Three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles, |
| and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the |
| village street. There were scores of people, most of them |
| sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The |
| soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realise |
| the gravity of their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with |
| a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids, |
| angrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them behind. I |
| stopped and gripped his arm. |
| |
| "Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the pine tops |
| that hid the Martians. |
| |
| "Eh?" said he, turning. "I was explainin' these is vallyble." |
| |
| "Death!" I shouted. "Death is coming! Death!" and leaving him to |
| digest that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-man. At the |
| corner I looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still |
| standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and |
| staring vaguely over the trees. |
| |
| No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were |
| established; the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen |
| in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing |
| miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants |
| of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily |
| dressed, were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping, |
| children excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this |
| astonishing variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst of it |
| all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration, |
| and his bell was jangling out above the excitement. |
| |
| I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking |
| fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. |
| Patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white-- |
| were warning people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as |
| soon as the firing began. We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that |
| a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway |
| station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. |
| The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe, in order to allow of |
| the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and I have heard since |
| that a savage struggle occurred for places in the special trains that |
| were put on at a later hour. |
| |
| We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found |
| ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames |
| join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a |
| little cart. The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are |
| to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On the |
| Shepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of |
| Shepperton Church--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the |
| trees. |
| |
| Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the |
| flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more |
| people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. |
| People came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife |
| were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of |
| their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try |
| to get away from Shepperton station. |
| |
| There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea |
| people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply |
| formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be |
| certainly destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would |
| glance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but |
| everything over there was still. |
| |
| Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything |
| was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side. The people who |
| landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big |
| ferryboat had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on |
| the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without |
| offering to help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited |
| hours. |
| |
| "What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!" said a man |
| near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from |
| the direction of Chertsey, a muffled thud--the sound of a gun. |
| |
| The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries |
| across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up |
| the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. |
| Everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet |
| invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows |
| feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows |
| motionless in the warm sunlight. |
| |
| "The sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubtfully. A |
| haziness rose over the treetops. |
| |
| Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff |
| of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the |
| ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing |
| two or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished. |
| |
| "Here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "Yonder! D'yer |
| see them? Yonder!" |
| |
| Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armoured |
| Martians appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat |
| meadows that stretched towards Chertsey, and striding hurriedly |
| towards the river. Little cowled figures they seemed at first, going |
| with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds. |
| |
| Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armoured |
| bodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the |
| guns, growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer. One on the extreme |
| left, the remotest that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, |
| and the ghostly, terrible Heat-Ray I had already seen on Friday night |
| smote towards Chertsey, and struck the town. |
| |
| At sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the crowd |
| near the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck. |
| There was no screaming or shouting, but a silence. Then a hoarse |
| murmur and a movement of feet--a splashing from the water. A man, too |
| frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung |
| round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his |
| burden. A woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me. I |
| turned with the rush of the people, but I was not too terrified for |
| thought. The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind. To get under water! |
| That was it! |
| |
| "Get under water!" I shouted, unheeded. |
| |
| I faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching Martian, |
| rushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water. |
| Others did the same. A boatload of people putting back came leaping |
| out as I rushed past. The stones under my feet were muddy and |
| slippery, and the river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet |
| scarcely waist-deep. Then, as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a |
| couple of hundred yards away, I flung myself forward under the |
| surface. The splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the |
| river sounded like thunderclaps in my ears. People were landing |
| hastily on both sides of the river. But the Martian machine took no |
| more notice for the moment of the people running this way and that |
| than a man would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his |
| foot has kicked. When, half suffocated, I raised my head above water, |
| the Martian's hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing |
| across the river, and as it advanced it swung loose what must have |
| been the generator of the Heat-Ray. |
| |
| In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading |
| halfway across. The knees of its foremost legs bent at the farther |
| bank, and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height |
| again, close to the village of Shepperton. Forthwith the six guns |
| which, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the |
| outskirts of that village, fired simultaneously. The sudden near |
| concussion, the last close upon the first, made my heart jump. The |
| monster was already raising the case generating the Heat-Ray as the |
| first shell burst six yards above the hood. |
| |
| I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw and thought nothing of the |
| other four Martian monsters; my attention was riveted upon the nearer |
| incident. Simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the |
| body as the hood twisted round in time to receive, but not in time to |
| dodge, the fourth shell. |
| |
| The shell burst clean in the face of the Thing. The hood bulged, |
| flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh |
| and glittering metal. |
| |
| "Hit!" shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer. |
| |
| I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me. I |
| could have leaped out of the water with that momentary exultation. |
| |
| The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did |
| not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer |
| heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now |
| rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living |
| intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to |
| the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate |
| device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight |
| line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton |
| Church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have |
| done, swerved aside, blundered on and collapsed with tremendous force |
| into the river out of my sight. |
| |
| A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, |
| mud, and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of |
| the Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into |
| steam. In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but |
| almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend upstream. I saw |
| people struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting |
| faintly above the seething and roar of the Martian's collapse. |
| |
| For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need |
| of self-preservation. I splashed through the tumultuous water, |
| pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the |
| bend. Half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the |
| confusion of the waves. The fallen Martian came into sight |
| downstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged. |
| |
| Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through |
| the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and |
| vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash |
| and spray of mud and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and |
| struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of |
| these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for |
| its life amid the waves. Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid |
| were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine. |
| |
| My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious |
| yelling, like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing |
| towns. A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me |
| and pointed. Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with |
| gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey. |
| The Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly. |
| |
| At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until |
| movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as |
| long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly |
| growing hotter. |
| |
| When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the |
| hair and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white |
| fog that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was |
| deafening. Then I saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified |
| by the mist. They had passed by me, and two were stooping over the |
| frothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade. |
| |
| The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two |
| hundred yards from me, the other towards Laleham. The generators of |
| the Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way |
| and that. |
| |
| The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of |
| noises--the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling |
| houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the |
| crackling and roaring of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to |
| mingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and |
| fro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent |
| white, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. The |
| nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint |
| and pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro. |
| |
| For a moment perhaps I stood there, breast-high in the almost |
| boiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. Through |
| the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river |
| scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs |
| hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running to and |
| fro in utter dismay on the towing path. |
| |
| Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping |
| towards me. The houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch, and |
| darted out flames; the txrees changed to fire with a roar. The Ray |
| flickered up and down the towing path, licking off the people who ran |
| this way and that, and came down to the water's edge not fifty yards |
| from where I stood. It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the |
| water in its track rose in a boiling weal crested with steam. I |
| turned shoreward. |
| |
| In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point had |
| rushed upon me. I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded, |
| agonised, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the |
| shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell |
| helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare |
| gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. |
| I expected nothing but death. |
| |
| I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a |
| score of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel, |
| whirling it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense, |
| and then of the four carrying the debris of their comrade between |
| them, now clear and then presently faint through a veil of smoke, |
| receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of |
| river and meadow. And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle |
| I had escaped. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER THIRTEEN |
| |
| HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE |
| |
| After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial |
| weapons, the Martians retreated to their original position upon |
| Horsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris of |
| their smashed companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray |
| and negligible victim as myself. Had they left their comrade and |
| pushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and |
| London but batteries of twelve-pounder guns, and they would certainly |
| have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their approach; |
| as sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent would have been as |
| the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago. |
| |
| But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its |
| interplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours brought them |
| reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now |
| fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with |
| furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position until, |
| before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the |
| hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black |
| muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area--perhaps twenty |
| square miles altogether--that encircled the Martian encampment on |
| Horsell Common, through charred and ruined villages among the green |
| trees, through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a |
| day ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs |
| that were presently to warn the gunners of the Martian approach. But |
| the Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger of |
| human proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either |
| cylinder, save at the price of his life. |
| |
| It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the |
| afternoon in going to and fro, transferring everything from the second |
| and third cylinders--the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third |
| at Pyrford--to their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above |
| the blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and |
| wide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast |
| fighting-machines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work |
| there far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green smoke |
| that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and |
| even, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom Downs. |
| |
| And while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next |
| sally, and in front of me Humanity gathered for the battle, I made my |
| way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning |
| Weybridge towards London. |
| |
| I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting down- |
| stream; and throwing off the most of my sodden clothes, I went after |
| it, gained it, and so escaped out of that destruction. There were no |
| oars in the boat, but I contrived to paddle, as well as my parboiled |
| hands would allow, down the river towards Halliford and Walton, going |
| very tediously and continually looking behind me, as you may well |
| understand. I followed the river, because I considered that the water |
| gave me my best chance of escape should these giants return. |
| |
| The hot water from the Martian's overthrow drifted downstream with |
| me, so that for the best part of a mile I could see little of either |
| bank. Once, however, I made out a string of black figures hurrying |
| across the meadows from the direction of Weybridge. Halliford, it |
| seemed, was deserted, and several of the houses facing the river were |
| on fire. It was strange to see the place quite tranquil, quite |
| desolate under the hot blue sky, with the smoke and little threads of |
| flame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon. Never before |
| had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive |
| crowd. A little farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and |
| glowing, and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late |
| field of hay. |
| |
| For a long time I drifted, so painful and weary was I after the |
| violence I had been through, and so intense the heat upon the water. |
| Then my fears got the better of me again, and I resumed my paddling. |
| The sun scorched my bare back. At last, as the bridge at Walton was |
| coming into sight round the bend, my fever and faintness overcame my |
| fears, and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down, deadly sick, |
| amid the long grass. I suppose the time was then about four or five |
| o'clock. I got up presently, walked perhaps half a mile without |
| meeting a soul, and then lay down again in the shadow of a hedge. I |
| seem to remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last |
| spurt. I was also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no |
| more water. It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I |
| cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead |
| worried me excessively. |
| |
| I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that |
| probably I dozed. I became aware of him as a seated figure in soot- |
| smudged shirt sleeves, and with his upturned, clean-shaven face |
| staring at a faint flickering that danced over the sky. The sky was |
| what is called a mackerel sky--rows and rows of faint down-plumes of |
| cloud, just tinted with the midsummer sunset. |
| |
| I sat up, and at the rustle of my motion he looked at me quickly. |
| |
| "Have you any water?" I asked abruptly. |
| |
| He shook his head. |
| |
| "You have been asking for water for the last hour," he said. |
| |
| For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I dare |
| say he found me a strange enough figure, naked, save for my water- |
| soaked trousers and socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders |
| blackened by the smoke. His face was a fair weakness, his chin |
| retreated, and his hair lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his low |
| forehead; his eyes were rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring. |
| He spoke abruptly, looking vacantly away from me. |
| |
| "What does it mean?" he said. "What do these things mean?" |
| |
| I stared at him and made no answer. |
| |
| He extended a thin white hand and spoke in almost a complaining |
| tone. |
| |
| "Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The |
| morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my |
| brain for the afternoon, and then--fire, earthquake, death! As if it |
| were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work---- What |
| are these Martians?" |
| |
| "What are we?" I answered, clearing my throat. |
| |
| He gripped his knees and turned to look at me again. For half a |
| minute, perhaps, he stared silently. |
| |
| "I was walking through the roads to clear my brain," he said. "And |
| suddenly--fire, earthquake, death!" |
| |
| He relapsed into silence, with his chin now sunken almost to his |
| knees. |
| |
| Presently he began waving his hand. |
| |
| "All the work--all the Sunday schools--What have we done--what has |
| Weybridge done? Everything gone--everything destroyed. The church! |
| We rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence! |
| Why?" |
| |
| Another pause, and he broke out again like one demented. |
| |
| "The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!" he shouted. |
| |
| His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of |
| Weybridge. |
| |
| By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous |
| tragedy in which he had been involved--it was evident he was a |
| fugitive from Weybridge--had driven him to the very verge of his |
| reason. |
| |
| "Are we far from Sunbury?" I said, in a matter-of-fact tone. |
| |
| "What are we to do?" he asked. "Are these creatures everywhere? |
| Has the earth been given over to them?" |
| |
| "Are we far from Sunbury?" |
| |
| "Only this morning I officiated at early celebration----" |
| |
| "Things have changed," I said, quietly. "You must keep your head. |
| There is still hope." |
| |
| "Hope!" |
| |
| "Yes. Plentiful hope--for all this destruction!" |
| |
| I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first, |
| but as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their |
| former stare, and his regard wandered from me. |
| |
| "This must be the beginning of the end," he said, interrupting me. |
| "The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall |
| call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide |
| them--hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!" |
| |
| I began to understand the position. I ceased my laboured |
| reasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand |
| on his shoulder. |
| |
| "Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good |
| is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes |
| and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you |
| think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent." |
| |
| For a time he sat in blank silence. |
| |
| "But how can we escape?" he asked, suddenly. "They are |
| invulnerable, they are pitiless." |
| |
| "Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other," I answered. "And the |
| mightier they are the more sane and wary should we be. One of them |
| was killed yonder not three hours ago." |
| |
| "Killed!" he said, staring about him. "How can God's ministers be |
| killed?" |
| |
| "I saw it happen." I proceeded to tell him. "We have chanced to |
| come in for the thick of it," said I, "and that is all." |
| |
| "What is that flicker in the sky?" he asked abruptly. |
| |
| I told him it was the heliograph signalling--that it was the sign |
| of human help and effort in the sky. |
| |
| "We are in the midst of it," I said, "quiet as it is. That flicker |
| in the sky tells of the gathering storm. Yonder, I take it are the |
| Martians, and Londonward, where those hills rise about Richmond and |
| Kingston and the trees give cover, earthworks are being thrown up and |
| guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be coming this way |
| again." |
| |
| And even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a |
| gesture. |
| |
| "Listen!" he said. |
| |
| From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance |
| of distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then everything was still. |
| A cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us. High in the |
| west the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of |
| Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot, still splendour of the sunset. |
| |
| "We had better follow this path," I said, "northward." |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FOURTEEN |
| |
| IN LONDON |
| |
| My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. |
| He was a medical student working for an imminent examination, and he |
| heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning |
| papers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles |
| on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and |
| vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity. |
| |
| The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a |
| number of people with a quick-firing gun, so the story ran. The |
| telegram concluded with the words: "Formidable as they seem to be, the |
| Martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, |
| indeed, seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due to the |
| relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." On that last |
| text their leader-writer expanded very comfortingly. |
| |
| Of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which |
| my brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no |
| signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers |
| puffed scraps of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell |
| beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of |
| the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight. Then the |
| ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare |
| fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication. This was |
| thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the |
| line. Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of |
| my drive to Leatherhead and back. |
| |
| My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the |
| description in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from |
| my house. He made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order, |
| as he says, to see the Things before they were killed. He dispatched |
| a telegram, which never reached me, about four o'clock, and spent the |
| evening at a music hall. |
| |
| In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my |
| brother reached Waterloo in a cab. On the platform from which the |
| midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an |
| accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night. The nature |
| of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed, the railway |
| authorities did not clearly know at that time. There was very little |
| excitement in the station, as the officials, failing to realise that |
| anything further than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction |
| had occurred, were running the theatre trains which usually passed |
| through Woking round by Virginia Water or Guildford. They were busy |
| making the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the |
| Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions. A nocturnal |
| newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, to |
| whom he bears a slight resemblance, waylaid and tried to interview |
| him. Few people, excepting the railway officials, connected the |
| breakdown with the Martians. |
| |
| I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday |
| morning "all London was electrified by the news from Woking." As a |
| matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant |
| phrase. Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the |
| panic of Monday morning. Those who did took some time to realise all |
| that the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed. The |
| majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers. |
| |
| The habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the |
| Londoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course |
| in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors: |
| "About seven o'clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder, |
| and, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely |
| wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an |
| entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. |
| Maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field |
| guns have been disabled by them. Flying hussars have been galloping |
| into Chertsey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards |
| Chertsey or Windsor. Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and |
| earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonward." That |
| was how the Sunday SUN put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt |
| "handbook" article in the REFEREE compared the affair to a menagerie |
| suddenly let loose in a village. |
| |
| No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured |
| Martians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be |
| sluggish: "crawling," "creeping painfully"--such expressions occurred |
| in almost all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have |
| been written by an eyewitness of their advance. The Sunday papers |
| printed separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in |
| default of it. But there was practically nothing more to tell people |
| until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press |
| agencies the news in their possession. It was stated that the people |
| of Walton and Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along the |
| roads Londonward, and that was all. |
| |
| My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, |
| still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. There |
| he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for |
| peace. Coming out, he bought a REFEREE. He became alarmed at the |
| news in this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if |
| communication were restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and |
| innumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely |
| affected by the strange intelligence that the news venders were |
| disseminating. People were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only |
| on account of the local residents. At the station he heard for the |
| first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. |
| The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been |
| received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that |
| these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise |
| detail out of them. |
| |
| "There's fighting going on about Weybridge" was the extent of their |
| information. |
| |
| The train service was now very much disorganised. Quite a number |
| of people who had been expecting friends from places on the South- |
| Western network were standing about the station. One grey-headed old |
| gentleman came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my |
| brother. "It wants showing up," he said. |
| |
| One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, |
| containing people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the |
| locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and |
| white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings. |
| |
| "There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts |
| and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They |
| come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been |
| guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have |
| told them to get off at once because the Martians are coming. We |
| heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was |
| thunder. What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't get |
| out of their pit, can they?" |
| |
| My brother could not tell him. |
| |
| Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to |
| the clients of the underground railway, and that the Sunday |
| excursionists began to return from all over the South-Western "lung"-- |
| Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth--at unnaturally |
| early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to |
| tell of. Everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered. |
| |
| About five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely |
| excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost |
| invariably closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western |
| stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and |
| carriages crammed with soldiers. These were the guns that were |
| brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an |
| exchange of pleasantries: "You'll get eaten!" "We're the beast- |
| tamers!" and so forth. A little while after that a squad of police |
| came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms, |
| and my brother went out into the street again. |
| |
| The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of |
| Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge |
| a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came |
| drifting down the stream in patches. The sun was just setting, and the |
| Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most |
| peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with |
| long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was talk of a |
| floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told |
| my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west. |
| |
| In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who |
| had just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and |
| staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the |
| other down Wellington Street. "Fighting at Weybridge! Full |
| description! Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!" He had to |
| give threepence for a copy of that paper. |
| |
| Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full |
| power and terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not |
| merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds |
| swaying vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and |
| smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand |
| against them. |
| |
| They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred |
| feet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot |
| out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, |
| had been planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially |
| between the Woking district and London. Five of the machines had been |
| seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been |
| destroyed. In the other cases the shells had missed, and the |
| batteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses |
| of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was |
| optimistic. |
| |
| The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They |
| had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle |
| about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon |
| them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, |
| Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich--even from the north; among others, |
| long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one |
| hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly |
| covering London. Never before in England had there been such a vast |
| or rapid concentration of military material. |
| |
| Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed |
| at once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and |
| distributed. No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the |
| strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to |
| avoid and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were strange and |
| terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more |
| than twenty of them against our millions. |
| |
| The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the |
| cylinders, that at the outside there could not be more than five in |
| each cylinder--fifteen altogether. And one at least was disposed of-- |
| perhaps more. The public would be fairly warned of the approach of |
| danger, and elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of |
| the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs. And so, with |
| reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the |
| authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation |
| closed. |
| |
| This was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was |
| still wet, and there had been no time to add a word of comment. It |
| was curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents |
| of the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place. |
| |
| All down Wellington Street people could be seen fluttering out the |
| pink sheets and reading, and the Strand was suddenly noisy with the |
| voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. Men came |
| scrambling off buses to secure copies. Certainly this news excited |
| people intensely, whatever their previous apathy. The shutters of a |
| map shop in the Strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a |
| man in his Sunday raiment, lemon-yellow gloves even, was visible |
| inside the window hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the glass. |
| |
| Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his |
| hand, my brother saw some of the fugitives from West Surrey. There |
| was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in |
| a cart such as greengrocers use. He was driving from the direction of |
| Westminster Bridge; and close behind him came a hay waggon with five |
| or six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. |
| The faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance |
| contrasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best appearance of the |
| people on the omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at |
| them out of cabs. They stopped at the Square as if undecided which |
| way to take, and finally turned eastward along the Strand. Some way |
| behind these came a man in workday clothes, riding one of those old- |
| fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. He was dirty and white |
| in the face. |
| |
| My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such |
| people. He had a vague idea that he might see something of me. He |
| noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of |
| the refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses. |
| One was professing to have seen the Martians. "Boilers on stilts, I |
| tell you, striding along like men." Most of them were excited and |
| animated by their strange experience. |
| |
| Beyond Victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade with |
| these arrivals. At all the street corners groups of people were |
| reading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday |
| visitors. They seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the |
| roads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My |
| brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory |
| answers from most. |
| |
| None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who |
| assured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous |
| night. |
| |
| "I come from Byfleet," he said; "man on a bicycle came through the |
| place in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to |
| come away. Then came soldiers. We went out to look, and there were |
| clouds of smoke to the south--nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming |
| that way. Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from |
| Weybridge. So I've locked up my house and come on." |
| |
| At the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the |
| authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the |
| invaders without all this inconvenience. |
| |
| About eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible |
| all over the south of London. My brother could not hear it for the |
| traffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet |
| back streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly. |
| |
| He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent's Park, |
| about two. He was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at |
| the evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run, |
| even as mine had run on Saturday, on military details. He thought of |
| all those silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside; |
| he tried to imagine "boilers on stilts" a hundred feet high. |
| |
| There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford |
| Street, and several in the Marylebone Road, but so slowly was the news |
| spreading that Regent Street and Portland Place were full of their |
| usual Sunday-night promenaders, albeit they talked in groups, and |
| along the edge of Regent's Park there were as many silent couples |
| "walking out" together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had |
| been. The night was warm and still, and a little oppressive; the |
| sound of guns continued intermittently, and after midnight there |
| seemed to be sheet lightning in the south. |
| |
| He read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to |
| me. He was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly. He |
| returned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination |
| notes. He went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from |
| lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door |
| knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour |
| of bells. Red reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay |
| astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad. |
| Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window. |
| |
| His room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down |
| the street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window sash, |
| and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. Enquiries were |
| being shouted. "They are coming!" bawled a policeman, hammering at |
| the door; "the Martians are coming!" and hurried to the next door. |
| |
| The sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street |
| Barracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing |
| sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin. There was a noise of doors |
| opening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from |
| darkness into yellow illumination. |
| |
| Up the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly |
| into noise at the corner, rising to a clattering climax under the |
| window, and dying away slowly in the distance. Close on the rear of |
| this came a couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of |
| flying vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm station, where |
| the North-Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming |
| down the gradient into Euston. |
| |
| For a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank |
| astonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and |
| delivering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him |
| opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed |
| only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his |
| waist, his hair disordered from his pillow. |
| |
| "What the devil is it?" he asked. "A fire? What a devil of a |
| row!" |
| |
| They both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear |
| what the policemen were shouting. People were coming out of the side |
| streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking. |
| |
| "What the devil is it all about?" said my brother's fellow lodger. |
| |
| My brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with |
| each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing |
| excitement. And presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers |
| came bawling into the street: |
| |
| "London in danger of suffocation! The Kingston and Richmond |
| defences forced! Fearful massacres in the Thames Valley!" |
| |
| And all about him--in the rooms below, in the houses on each side |
| and across the road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the |
| hundred other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne |
| Park district and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn |
| and St. John's Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch and |
| Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the |
| vastness of London from Ealing to East Ham--people were rubbing their |
| eyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions, |
| dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew |
| through the streets. It was the dawn of the great panic. London, |
| which had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert, was |
| awakened, in the small hours of Monday morning, to a vivid sense of |
| danger. |
| |
| Unable from his window to learn what was happening, my brother went |
| down and out into the street, just as the sky between the parapets of |
| the houses grew pink with the early dawn. The flying people on foot |
| and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment. "Black Smoke!" he |
| heard people crying, and again "Black Smoke!" The contagion of such a |
| unanimous fear was inevitable. As my brother hesitated on the door- |
| step, he saw another news vender approaching, and got a paper |
| forthwith. The man was running away with the rest, and selling his |
| papers for a shilling each as he ran--a grotesque mingling of profit |
| and panic. |
| |
| And from this paper my brother read that catastrophic dispatch of |
| the Commander-in-Chief: |
| |
| "The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and |
| poisonous vapour by means of rockets. They have smothered our |
| batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are |
| advancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way. It |
| is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Black Smoke |
| but in instant flight." |
| |
| That was all, but it was enough. The whole population of the great |
| six-million city was stirring, slipping, running; presently it would |
| be pouring EN MASSE northward. |
| |
| "Black Smoke!" the voices cried. "Fire!" |
| |
| The bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart |
| carelessly driven smashed, amid shrieks and curses, against the water |
| trough up the street. Sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the |
| houses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps. |
| And overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm. |
| |
| He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down |
| stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in |
| dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating. |
| |
| As my brother began to realise the import of all these things, he |
| turned hastily to his own room, put all his available money--some ten |
| pounds altogether--into his pockets, and went out again into the |
| streets. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FIFTEEN |
| |
| WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY |
| |
| It was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under |
| the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was |
| watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the |
| Martians had resumed the offensive. So far as one can ascertain from |
| the conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of |
| them remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine |
| that night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of |
| green smoke. |
| |
| But three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing |
| slowly and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford |
| towards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant |
| batteries against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in |
| a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest |
| fellow. They communicated with one another by means of sirenlike |
| howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another. |
| |
| It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. |
| George's Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford. The Ripley |
| gunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been |
| placed in such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual |
| volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village, |
| while the Martian, without using his Heat-Ray, walked serenely over |
| their guns, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and |
| so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he |
| destroyed. |
| |
| The St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a better |
| mettle. Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been |
| quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their |
| guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about |
| a thousand yards' range. |
| |
| The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few |
| paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns |
| were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a |
| prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, |
| answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem |
| that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The |
| whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground, |
| and, simultaneously, both his companions brought their Heat-Rays to |
| bear on the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about |
| the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were |
| already running over the crest of the hill escaped. |
| |
| After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and |
| halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they |
| remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian |
| who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small |
| brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of |
| blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About |
| nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees |
| again. |
| |
| It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three |
| sentinels were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick |
| black tube. A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the |
| seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a |
| curved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and the village of |
| Send, southwest of Ripley. |
| |
| A dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they |
| began to move, and warned the waiting batteries about Ditton and |
| Esher. At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly |
| armed with tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against |
| the western sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we |
| hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward out |
| of Halliford. They moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a |
| milky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height. |
| |
| At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began |
| running; but I knew it was no good running from a Martian, and I |
| turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the |
| broad ditch by the side of the road. He looked back, saw what I was |
| doing, and turned to join me. |
| |
| The two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury, the |
| remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away |
| towards Staines. |
| |
| The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up |
| their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute |
| silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. Never |
| since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so |
| still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had |
| precisely the same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary possession |
| of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the |
| stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St. |
| George's Hill and the woods of Painshill. |
| |
| But facing that crescent everywhere--at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton, |
| Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river, and across |
| the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees |
| or village houses gave sufficient cover--the guns were waiting. The |
| signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and |
| vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a |
| tense expectation. The Martians had but to advance into the line of |
| fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns |
| glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a |
| thunderous fury of battle. |
| |
| No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those |
| vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle--how |
| much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions |
| ere organized, disiplined, working together? Or did they interpret |
| our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady |
| investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of |
| onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might |
| exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A |
| hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that |
| vast sentinel shape. And in the back of my mind was the sense of all |
| the huge unknown and hidden forces Londonward. Had they prepared |
| pitfalls? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare? Would |
| the Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of |
| their mighty province of houses? |
| |
| Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and |
| peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of |
| a gun. Another nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside |
| us raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy |
| report that made the ground heave. The one towards Staines answered |
| him. There was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation. |
| |
| I was so excited by these heavy minute-guns following one another |
| that I so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to |
| clamber up into the hedge and stare towards Sunbury. As I did so a |
| second report followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards |
| Hounslow. I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such |
| evidence of its work. But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with |
| one solitary star, and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath. |
| And there had been no crash, no answering explosion. The silence was |
| restored; the minute lengthened to three. |
| |
| "What has happened?" said the curate, standing up beside me. |
| |
| "Heaven knows!" said I. |
| |
| A bat flickered by and vanished. A distant tumult of shouting |
| began and ceased. I looked again at the Martian, and saw he was now |
| moving eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion, |
| |
| Every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring |
| upon him; but the evening calm was unbroken. The figure of the Martian |
| grew smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering |
| night had swallowed him up. By a common impulse we clambered higher. |
| Towards Sunbury was a dark appearance, as though a conical hill had |
| suddenly come into being there, hiding our view of the farther |
| country; and then, remoter across the river, over Walton, we saw |
| another such summit. These hill-like forms grew lower and broader |
| even as we stared. |
| |
| Moved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I |
| perceived a third of these cloudy black kopjes had risen. |
| |
| Everything had suddenly become very still. Far away to the |
| southeast, marking the quiet, we heard the Martians hooting to one |
| another, and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of |
| their guns. But the earthly artillery made no reply. |
| |
| Now at the time we could not understand these things, but later I |
| was to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the |
| twilight. Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have |
| described, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a |
| huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other |
| possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. Some fired |
| only one of these, some two--as in the case of the one we had seen; |
| the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at |
| that time. These canisters smashed on striking the ground--they did |
| not explode--and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, |
| inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus |
| cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the |
| surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of |
| its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes. |
| |
| It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that, |
| after the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact, it sank |
| down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather |
| liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the |
| valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the |
| carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And |
| where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the |
| surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank |
| slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and |
| it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one |
| could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. |
| The vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together |
| in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving |
| reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist |
| and moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust. |
| Save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue |
| of the spectrum is concerned, we are still entirely ignorant of the |
| nature of this substance. |
| |
| Once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the black |
| smoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its precipitation, |
| that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high |
| houses and on great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison |
| altogether, as was proved even that night at Street Cobham and Ditton. |
| |
| The man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of |
| the strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from the |
| church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out |
| of its inky nothingness. For a day and a half he remained there, |
| weary, starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue sky and |
| against the prospect of the distant hills a velvet-black expanse, with |
| red roofs, green trees, and, later, black-veiled shrubs and gates, |
| barns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight. |
| |
| But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed |
| to remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground. As a rule |
| the Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it |
| again by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it. |
| |
| This they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the |
| starlight from the window of a deserted house at Upper Halliford, |
| whither we had returned. From there we could see the searchlights on |
| Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the |
| windows rattled, and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that |
| had been put in position there. These continued intermittently for |
| the space of a quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the |
| invisible Martians at Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of |
| the electric light vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow. |
| |
| Then the fourth cylinder fell--a brilliant green meteor--as I |
| learned afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the guns on the Richmond |
| and Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far |
| away in the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard |
| before the black vapour could overwhelm the gunners. |
| |
| So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a |
| wasps' nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the |
| Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, |
| until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. |
| All night through their destructive tubes advanced. Never once, after |
| the Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give the |
| artillery the ghost of a chance against them. Wherever there was a |
| possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of |
| the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly |
| displayed the Heat-Ray was brought to bear. |
| |
| By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and |
| the glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black |
| smoke, blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as |
| far as the eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly |
| waded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that. |
| |
| They were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they |
| had but a limited supply of material for its production or because |
| they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe |
| the opposition they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly |
| succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to |
| their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, |
| so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats |
| and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames |
| refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive |
| operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of |
| mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and |
| spasmodic. |
| |
| One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries |
| towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. Survivors there |
| were none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers |
| alert and watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, |
| the limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of |
| civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the |
| evening stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned |
| and wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the |
| Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and |
| houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields. |
| |
| One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the |
| swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing |
| headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable |
| darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon |
| its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, |
| falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men |
| choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of |
| the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction--nothing but |
| a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead. |
| |
| Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of |
| Richmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a |
| last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the |
| necessity of flight. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SIXTEEN |
| |
| THE EXODUS FROM LONDON |
| |
| So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the |
| greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning--the stream of |
| flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round |
| the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the |
| shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel |
| northward and eastward. By ten o'clock the police organisation, and |
| by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, |
| losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in |
| that swift liquefaction of the social body. |
| |
| All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern |
| people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and |
| trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for standing- |
| room in the carriages even at two o'clock. By three, people were |
| being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of |
| hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were |
| fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct |
| the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the |
| people they were called out to protect. |
| |
| And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused |
| to return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an |
| ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the |
| northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes, |
| and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and |
| across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges |
| in its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and |
| surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but |
| unable to escape. |
| |
| After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at |
| Chalk Farm--the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods |
| yard there PLOUGHED through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men |
| fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his |
| furnace--my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across |
| through a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost |
| in the sack of a cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was |
| punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off, |
| notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep |
| foot of Haverstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned |
| horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road. |
| |
| So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware |
| Road, reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead |
| of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway, |
| curious, wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some |
| horsemen, and two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of the |
| wheel broke, and the machine became unridable. He left it by the |
| roadside and trudged through the village. There were shops half |
| opened in the main street of the place, and people crowded on the |
| pavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this |
| extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning. He |
| succeeded in getting some food at an inn. |
| |
| For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The |
| flying people increased in number. Many of them, like my brother, |
| seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh news of |
| the invaders from Mars. |
| |
| At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested. |
| Most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there |
| were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and |
| the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans. |
| |
| It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where |
| some friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike |
| into a quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a stile, |
| and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. He passed near |
| several farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not |
| learn. He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High |
| Barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers. |
| He came upon them just in time to save them. |
| |
| He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a |
| couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in |
| which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the |
| frightened pony's head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in |
| white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure, |
| slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her |
| disengaged hand. |
| |
| My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried |
| towards the struggle. One of the men desisted and turned towards him, |
| and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was |
| unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and |
| sent him down against the wheel of the chaise. |
| |
| It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him |
| quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the |
| slender lady's arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung |
| across his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and |
| the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in |
| the direction from which he had come. |
| |
| Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the |
| horse's head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down |
| the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking |
| back. The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he |
| stopped him with a blow in the face. Then, realising that he was |
| deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, |
| with the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned |
| now, following remotely. |
| |
| Suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong, |
| and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists |
| again. He would have had little chance against them had not the |
| slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. It |
| seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the |
| seat when she and her companion were attacked. She fired at six |
| yards' distance, narrowly missing my brother. The less courageous of |
| the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his |
| cowardice. They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third |
| man lay insensible. |
| |
| "Take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her |
| revolver. |
| |
| "Go back to the chaise," said my brother, wiping the blood from his |
| split lip. |
| |
| She turned without a word--they were both panting--and they went |
| back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened |
| pony. |
| |
| The robbers had evidently had enough of it. When my brother looked |
| again they were retreating. |
| |
| "I'll sit here," said my brother, "if I may"; and he got upon the |
| empty front seat. The lady looked over her shoulder. |
| |
| "Give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's |
| side. In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my |
| brother's eyes. |
| |
| So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a |
| cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an |
| unknown lane with these two women. |
| |
| He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon |
| living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous |
| case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the |
| Martian advance. He had hurried home, roused the women--their servant |
| had left them two days before--packed some provisions, put his |
| revolver under the seat--luckily for my brother--and told them to |
| drive on to Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. He |
| stopped behind to tell the neighbours. He would overtake them, he |
| said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly |
| nine and they had seen nothing of him. They could not stop in Edgware |
| because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come |
| into this side lane. |
| |
| That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently |
| they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet. He promised to stay with |
| them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the |
| missing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the |
| revolver--a weapon strange to him--in order to give them confidence. |
| |
| They made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became |
| happy in the hedge. He told them of his own escape out of London, and |
| all that he knew of these Martians and their ways. The sun crept |
| higher in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place |
| to an uneasy state of anticipation. Several wayfarers came along the |
| lane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. Every |
| broken answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster |
| that had come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate |
| necessity for prosecuting this flight. He urged the matter upon them. |
| |
| "We have money," said the slender woman, and hesitated. |
| |
| Her eyes met my brother's, and her hesitation ended. |
| |
| "So have I," said my brother. |
| |
| She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, |
| besides a five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get |
| upon a train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was |
| hopeless, seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains, |
| and broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and |
| thence escaping from the country altogether. |
| |
| Mrs. Elphinstone--that was the name of the woman in white--would |
| listen to no reasoning, and kept calling upon "George"; but her |
| sister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last |
| agreed to my brother's suggestion. So, designing to cross the Great |
| North Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony |
| to save it as much as possible. As the sun crept up the sky the day |
| became excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew |
| burning and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly. The |
| hedges were grey with dust. And as they advanced towards Barnet a |
| tumultuous murmuring grew stronger. |
| |
| They began to meet more people. For the most part these were |
| staring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, |
| unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on |
| the ground. They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one |
| hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His |
| paroxysm of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back. |
| |
| As my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south |
| of Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on |
| their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then |
| passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a |
| small portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of the lane, |
| from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the |
| high road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and |
| driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. There were |
| three girls, East End factory girls, and a couple of little children |
| crowded in the cart. |
| |
| "This'll tike us rahnd Edgware?" asked the driver, wild-eyed, |
| white-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the |
| left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks. |
| |
| My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the |
| houses in front of them, and veiling the white facade of a terrace |
| beyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. |
| Elphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red |
| flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot, |
| blue sky. The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the |
| disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the |
| creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs. The lane came round |
| sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads. |
| |
| "Good heavens!" cried Mrs. Elphinstone. "What is this you are |
| driving us into?" |
| |
| My brother stopped. |
| |
| For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of |
| human beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. A great bank |
| of dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything |
| within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was |
| perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses |
| and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every |
| description. |
| |
| "Way!" my brother heard voices crying. "Make way!" |
| |
| It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting |
| point of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust |
| was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa |
| was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road |
| to add to the confusion. |
| |
| Two men came past them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy |
| bundle and weeping. A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, |
| circled dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my |
| brother's threat. |
| |
| So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses |
| to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent |
| in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded |
| forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, |
| hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding |
| multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust. |
| |
| "Go on! Go on!" cried the voices. "Way! Way!" |
| |
| One man's hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood |
| at the pony's head. Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace |
| by pace, down the lane. |
| |
| Edgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a riotous tumult, |
| but this was a whole population in movement. It is hard to imagine |
| that host. It had no character of its own. The figures poured out |
| past the corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the |
| lane. Along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the |
| wheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another. |
| |
| The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making |
| little way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted |
| forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing |
| so, sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the |
| villas. |
| |
| "Push on!" was the cry. "Push on! They are coming!" |
| |
| In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army, |
| gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, "Eternity! |
| Eternity!" His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother |
| could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust. Some of |
| the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses |
| and quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at |
| nothing with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or |
| lay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances. The horses' bits |
| were covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot. |
| |
| There were cabs, carriages, shop cars, waggons, beyond counting; a |
| mail cart, a road-cleaner's cart marked "Vestry of St. Pancras," a |
| huge timber waggon crowded with roughs. A brewer's dray rumbled by |
| with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood. |
| |
| "Clear the way!" cried the voices. "Clear the way!" |
| |
| "Eter-nity! Eter-nity!" came echoing down the road. |
| |
| There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with |
| children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in |
| dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came |
| men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side |
| by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black |
| rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy |
| workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like |
| clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my |
| brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one |
| wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it. |
| |
| But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had |
| in common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind |
| them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent |
| the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and |
| broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into |
| renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon |
| this multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. |
| They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various |
| cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; |
| the voices of most of them were hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a |
| refrain: |
| |
| "Way! Way! The Martians are coming!" |
| |
| Few stopped and came aside from that flood. The lane opened |
| slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a |
| delusive appearance of coming from the direction of London. Yet a |
| kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of |
| the stream, who for the most part rested but a moment before plunging |
| into it again. A little way down the lane, with two friends bending |
| over him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. |
| He was a lucky man to have friends. |
| |
| A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black |
| frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his |
| boot--his sock was blood-stained--shook out a pebble, and hobbled on |
| again; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw |
| herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping. |
| |
| "I can't go on! I can't go on!" |
| |
| My brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up, |
| speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone. So soon |
| as my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened. |
| |
| "Ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her |
| voice--"Ellen!" And the child suddenly darted away from my brother, |
| crying "Mother!" |
| |
| "They are coming," said a man on horseback, riding past along the |
| lane. |
| |
| "Out of the way, there!" bawled a coachman, towering high; and my |
| brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane. |
| |
| The people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse. My |
| brother pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge, and the man |
| drove by and stopped at the turn of the way. It was a carriage, with |
| a pole for a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces. My |
| brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something |
| on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet |
| hedge. |
| |
| One of the men came running to my brother. |
| |
| "Where is there any water?" he said. "He is dying fast, and very |
| thirsty. It is Lord Garrick." |
| |
| "Lord Garrick!" said my broter; "the Chief Justice?" |
| |
| "The water?" he said. |
| |
| "There may be a tap," said my brother, "in some of the houses. We |
| have no water. I dare not leave my people." |
| |
| The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner |
| house. |
| |
| "Go on!" said the people, thrusting at him. "They are coming! Go |
| on!" |
| |
| Then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle- |
| faced man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother's |
| eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to |
| break up into separate coins as it struck the ground. They rolled |
| hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses. The |
| man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab |
| struck his shoulder and sent him reeling. He gave a shriek and dodged |
| back, and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly. |
| |
| "Way!" cried the men all about him. "Make way!" |
| |
| So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands |
| open, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his |
| pocket. A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half |
| rising, he had been borne down under the horse's hoofs. |
| |
| "Stop!" screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, |
| tried to clutch the bit of the horse. |
| |
| Before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and |
| saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back. The |
| driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round |
| behind the cart. The multitudinous shouting confused his ears. The |
| man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to |
| rise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp |
| and dead. My brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a |
| man on a black horse came to his assistance. |
| |
| "Get him out of the road," said he; and, clutching the man's collar |
| with his free hand, my brother lugged him sideways. But he still |
| clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering |
| at his arm with a handful of gold. "Go on! Go on!" shouted angry |
| voices behind. |
| |
| "Way! Way!" |
| |
| There was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart |
| that the man on horseback stopped. My brother looked up, and the man |
| with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his |
| collar. There was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering |
| sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it. A hoof missed my |
| brother's foot by a hair's breadth. He released his grip on the |
| fallen man and jumped back. He saw anger change to terror on the face |
| of the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and my |
| brother was borne backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, |
| and had to fight hard in the torrent to recover it. |
| |
| He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with |
| all a child's want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated |
| eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed |
| under the rolling wheels. "Let us go back!" he shouted, and began |
| turning the pony round. "We cannot cross this--hell," he said and they |
| went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting |
| crowd was hidden. As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw |
| the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white |
| and drawn, and shining with perspiration. The two women sat silent, |
| crouching in their seat and shivering. |
| |
| Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone |
| was white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched |
| even to call upon "George." My brother was horrified and perplexed. |
| So soon as they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable |
| it was to attempt this crossing. He turned to Miss Elphinstone, |
| suddenly resolute. |
| |
| "We must go that way," he said, and led the pony round again. |
| |
| For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force |
| their way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the |
| traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its |
| head. A waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter |
| from the chaise. In another moment they were caught and swept forward |
| by the stream. My brother, with the cabman's whip marks red across |
| his face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from |
| her. |
| |
| "Point the revolver at the man behind," he said, giving it to her, |
| "if he presses us too hard. No!--point it at his horse." |
| |
| Then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right |
| across the road. But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, |
| to become a part of that dusty rout. They swept through Chipping |
| Barnet with the torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of |
| the town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the |
| way. It was din and confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the |
| town the road forks repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the |
| stress. |
| |
| They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of |
| the road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great |
| multitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at |
| the water. And farther on, from a lull near East Barnet, they saw two |
| trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order-- |
| trains swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the |
| engines--going northward along the Great Northern Railway. My brother |
| supposes they must have filled outside London, for at that time the |
| furious terror of the people had rendered the central termini |
| impossible. |
| |
| Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the |
| violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them. |
| They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and |
| none of them dared to sleep. And in the evening many people came |
| hurrying along the road nearby their stopping place, fleeing from |
| unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my |
| brother had come. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SEVENTEEN |
| |
| THE "THUNDER CHILD" |
| |
| Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday |
| have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself |
| slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road through |
| Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the |
| roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames |
| to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could |
| have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above |
| London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled |
| maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming |
| fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. I |
| have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of |
| the road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise |
| how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. |
| Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human |
| beings moved and suffered together. The legendary hosts of Goths and |
| Huns, the hugest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop |
| in that current. And this was no disciplined march; it was a |
| stampede--a stampede gigantic and terrible--without order and without |
| a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving |
| headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the |
| massacre of mankind. |
| |
| Directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of |
| streets far and wide, houses, churches, squares, crescents, gardens-- |
| already derelict--spread out like a huge map, and in the southward |
| BLOTTED. Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would have seemed as if |
| some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart. Steadily, |
| incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out |
| ramifications this way and that, now banking itself against rising |
| ground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a new-found valley, |
| exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper. |
| |
| And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, |
| the glittering Martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically |
| spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over |
| that, laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its |
| purpose, and taking possession of the conquered country. They do not |
| seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete |
| demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition. They exploded |
| any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked |
| the railways here and there. They were hamstringing mankind. They |
| seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations, and did |
| not come beyond the central part of London all that day. It is |
| possible that a very considerable number of people in London stuck to |
| their houses through Monday morning. Certain it is that many died at |
| home suffocated by the Black Smoke. |
| |
| Until about midday the Pool of London was an astonishing scene. |
| Steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the |
| enormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many |
| who swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and |
| drowned. About one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a |
| cloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars |
| Bridge. At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, |
| and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges |
| jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and |
| lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon |
| them from the riverfront. People were actually clambering down the |
| piers of the bridge from above. |
| |
| When, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and |
| waded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse. |
| |
| Of the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell. The |
| sixth star fell at Wimbledon. My brother, keeping watch beside the |
| women in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond |
| the hills. On Tuesday the little party, still set upon getting across |
| the sea, made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester. |
| The news that the Martians were now in possession of the whole of |
| London was confirmed. They had been seen at Highgate, and even, it |
| was said, at Neasden. But they did not come into my brother's view |
| until the morrow. |
| |
| That day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need |
| of provisions. As they grew hungry the rights of property ceased to |
| be regarded. Farmers were out to defend their cattle-sheds, |
| granaries, and ripening root crops with arms in their hands. A number |
| of people now, like my brother, had their faces eastward, and there |
| were some desperate souls even going back towards London to get food. |
| These were chiefly people from the northern suburbs, whose knowledge |
| of the Black Smoke came by hearsay. He heard that about half the |
| members of the government had gathered at Birmingham, and that |
| enormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used |
| in automatic mines across the Midland counties. |
| |
| He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the |
| desertions of the first day's panic, had resumed traffic, and was |
| running northward trains from St. Albans to relieve the congestion of |
| the home counties. There was also a placard in Chipping Ongar |
| announcing that large stores of flour were available in the northern |
| towns and that within twenty-four hours bread would be distributed |
| among the starving people in the neighbourhood. But this intelligence |
| did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed, and the three |
| pressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution |
| than this promise. Nor, as a matter of fact, did anyone else hear |
| more of it. That night fell the seventh star, falling upon Primrose |
| Hill. It fell while Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that |
| duty alternately with my brother. She saw it. |
| |
| On Wednesday the three fugitives--they had passed the night in a |
| field of unripe wheat--reached Chelmsford, and there a body of the |
| inhabitants, calling itself the Committee of Public Supply, seized the |
| pony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the |
| promise of a share in it the next day. Here there were rumours of |
| Martians at Epping, and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey |
| Powder Mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders. |
| |
| People were watching for Martians here from the church towers. My |
| brother, very luckily for him as it chanced, preferred to push on at |
| once to the coast rather than wait for food, although all three of |
| them were very hungry. By midday they passed through Tillingham, |
| which, strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent and deserted, save |
| for a few furtive plunderers hunting for food. Near Tillingham they |
| suddenly came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of |
| shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine. |
| |
| For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came |
| on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and |
| afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people. They |
| lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last |
| towards the Naze. Close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks-- |
| English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the |
| Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, |
| a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, |
| passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport |
| even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and |
| along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out |
| dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, |
| a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon. |
| |
| About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, |
| almost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship. This |
| was the ram THUNDER CHILD. It was the only warship in sight, but far |
| away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea--for that day |
| there was a dead calm--lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next |
| ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, |
| steam up and ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the |
| course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent |
| it. |
| |
| At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the |
| assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never |
| been out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself |
| friendless in a foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, |
| to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar. |
| She had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed |
| during the two days' journeyings. Her great idea was to return to |
| Stanmore. Things had been always well and safe at Stanmore. They |
| would find George at Stanmore. |
| |
| It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the |
| beach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the |
| attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent |
| a boat and drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. The |
| steamer was going, these men said, to Ostend. |
| |
| It was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares |
| at the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his |
| charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the |
| three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward. |
| |
| There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of |
| whom had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the |
| captain lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up |
| passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He |
| would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of |
| guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the |
| ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A |
| jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels. |
| |
| Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from |
| Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. At the |
| same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three |
| ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of |
| black smoke. But my brother's attention speedily reverted to the |
| distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke |
| rising out of the distant grey haze. |
| |
| The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big |
| crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and |
| hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, |
| advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At |
| that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear |
| and anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his |
| terror. Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of |
| the steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or |
| church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human |
| stride. |
| |
| It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more |
| amazed than terrified, watching this Titan advancing deliberately |
| towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the |
| coast fell away. Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, |
| striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther |
| off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway |
| up between sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as if to |
| intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded |
| between Foulness and the Naze. In spite of the throbbing exertions of |
| the engines of the little paddle-boat, and the pouring foam that her |
| wheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying slowness from |
| this ominous advance. |
| |
| Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of |
| shipping already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship |
| passing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on, |
| steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let |
| out, launches rushing hither and thither. He was so fascinated by |
| this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes |
| for anything seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she |
| had suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong |
| rom the seat upon which he was standing. There was a shouing all |
| about him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered |
| faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands. |
| |
| He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards |
| from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade of |
| a plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge |
| waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles |
| helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the |
| waterline. |
| |
| A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes |
| were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing |
| landward. Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, |
| and from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot |
| with fire. It was the torpedo ram, THUNDER CHILD, steaming headlong, |
| coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping. |
| |
| Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, |
| my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again, |
| and he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far |
| out to sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. |
| Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less |
| formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was |
| pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were regarding this new |
| antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence, it may be, the |
| giant was even such another as themselves. The THUNDER CHILD fired no |
| gun, but simply drove full speed towards them. It was probably her |
| not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did. They |
| did not know what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent |
| her to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray. |
| |
| She was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway |
| between the steamboat and the Martians--a diminishing black bulk |
| against the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast. |
| |
| Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a |
| canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side |
| and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an |
| unfolding torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear. |
| To the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in |
| their eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians. |
| |
| They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water |
| as they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like |
| generator of the Heat-Ray. He held it pointing obliquely downward, |
| and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch. It must have |
| driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod |
| through paper. |
| |
| A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the |
| Martian reeled and staggered. In another moment he was cut down, and |
| a great body of water and steam shot high in the air. The guns of the |
| THUNDER CHILD sounded through the reek, going off one after the other, |
| and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer, ricocheted |
| towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a smack to |
| matchwood. |
| |
| But no one heeded that very much. At the sight of the Martian's |
| collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all the |
| crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together. And then |
| they yelled again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove |
| something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts, |
| its ventilators and funnels spouting fire. |
| |
| She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and |
| her engines working. She headed straight for a second Martian, and |
| was within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear. Then |
| with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped |
| upward. The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and |
| in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the |
| impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing |
| of cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily. A boiling tumult of |
| steam hid everything again. |
| |
| "Two!," yelled the captain. |
| |
| Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer from end to end rang with |
| frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the |
| crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea. |
| |
| The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third |
| Martian and the coast altogether. And all this time the boat was |
| paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last |
| the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened, |
| and nothing of the THUNDER CHILD could be made out, nor could the |
| third Martian be seen. But the ironclads to seaward were now quite |
| close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat. |
| |
| The little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the |
| ironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still by |
| a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and |
| combining in the strangest way. The fleet of refugees was scattering |
| to the northeast; several smacks were sailing between the ironclads |
| and the steamboat. After a time, and before they reached the sinking |
| cloud bank, the warships turned northward, and then abruptly went |
| about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward. The |
| coast grew faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of |
| clouds that were gathering about the sinking sun. |
| |
| Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the |
| vibration of guns, and a form of black shadows moving. Everyone |
| struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding |
| furnace of the west, but nothing was to be distinguished clearly. A |
| mass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun. The |
| steamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense. |
| |
| The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the |
| evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the |
| captain cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. |
| Something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness--rushed |
| slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above |
| the clouds in the western sky; something flat and broad, and very |
| large, that swept round in a vast curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, |
| and vanished again into the grey mystery of the night. And as it flew |
| it rained down darkness upon the land. |
| |
| |
| |
| BOOK TWO |
| |
| THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER ONE |
| |
| UNDER FOOT |
| |
| In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to |
| tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two |
| chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at |
| Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will |
| resume. We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day--the |
| day of the panic--in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black |
| Smoke from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait in |
| aching inactivity during those two weary days. |
| |
| My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at |
| Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man. |
| I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off |
| from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin I |
| knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of |
| man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now |
| was not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to |
| believe that the Martians were moving London-ward and away from her. |
| Such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew very |
| weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I tired |
| of the sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual |
| remonstrance I kept away from him, staying in a room--evidently a |
| children's schoolroom--containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When |
| he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house |
| and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in. |
| |
| We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and |
| the morning of the next. There were signs of people in the next house |
| on Sunday evening--a face at a window and moving lights, and later the |
| slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were, nor what |
| became of them. We saw nothing of them next day. The Black Smoke |
| drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer |
| and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house |
| that hid us. |
| |
| A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff |
| with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed |
| all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate's hand as he fled |
| out of the front room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms |
| and looked out again, the country northward was as though a black |
| snowstorm had passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were |
| astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of |
| the scorched meadows. |
| |
| For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, |
| save that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But later |
| I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get |
| away. So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream |
| of action returned. But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable. |
| |
| "We are safe here," he repeated; "safe here." |
| |
| I resolved to leave him--would that I had! Wiser now for the |
| artilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and drink. I had found oil |
| and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that |
| I found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I meant |
| to go alone--had reconciled myself to going alone--he suddenly roused |
| himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we |
| started about five o'clock, as I should judge, along the blackened |
| road to Sunbury. |
| |
| In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying |
| in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and |
| luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pal of cindery |
| powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii. |
| We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of |
| strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were |
| relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating |
| drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro |
| under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance |
| towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first |
| people we saw. |
| |
| Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still |
| afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, |
| and there were more people about here, though none could give us news. |
| For the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull |
| to shift their quarters. I have an impression that many of the houses |
| here were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even |
| for flight. Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along |
| the road. I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap, |
| pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. We crossed |
| Richmond Bridge about half past eight. We hurried across the exposed |
| bridge, of course, but I noticed floating down the stream a number of |
| red masses, some many feet across. I did not know what these were-- |
| there was no time for scrutiny--and I put a more horrible |
| interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again on the Surrey |
| side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies--a heap |
| near the approach to the station; but we had no glimpse of the |
| Martians until we were some way towards Barnes. |
| |
| We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running |
| down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed |
| deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the |
| town of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke. |
| |
| Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people |
| running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in |
| sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood |
| aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must |
| immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go |
| on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate |
| crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again. |
| |
| But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, |
| and in the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a shrubbery, |
| and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, |
| and so emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the |
| shed, but he came hurrying after me. |
| |
| That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it |
| was manifest the Martians were about us. No sooner had the curate |
| overtaken me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen |
| before or another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew |
| Lodge. Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the |
| green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian |
| pursued them. In three strides he was among them, and they ran |
| radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to |
| destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed |
| them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much |
| as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder. |
| |
| It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any |
| other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We stood for a |
| moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a |
| walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and |
| lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were |
| out. |
| |
| I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage |
| to start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along |
| hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the |
| darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who |
| seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched |
| and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered |
| dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but |
| with their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty |
| feet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun |
| carriages. |
| |
| Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent |
| and deserted. Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too |
| dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my |
| companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided |
| to try one of the houses. |
| |
| The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the |
| window, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable |
| left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water |
| to drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our |
| next house-breaking. |
| |
| We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. |
| Here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the |
| pantry of this domicile we found a store of food--two loaves of bread |
| in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this |
| catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to |
| subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood |
| under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp |
| lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in |
| this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly |
| a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of |
| biscuits. |
| |
| We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike |
| a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle. |
| The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly |
| enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength |
| by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us. |
| |
| "It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding glare |
| of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly |
| visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then followed such |
| a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the |
| heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash |
| of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the |
| plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of |
| fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor |
| against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long |
| time, the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness |
| again, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from |
| a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me. |
| |
| For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things |
| came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself. |
| |
| "Are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper. |
| |
| At last I answered him. I sat up. |
| |
| "Don't move," he said. "The floor is covered with smashed crockery |
| from the dresser. You can't possibly move without making a noise, and |
| I fancy THEY are outside." |
| |
| We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other |
| breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near |
| us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound. |
| Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle. |
| |
| "That!" said the curate, when presently it happened again. |
| |
| "Yes," I said. "But what is it?" |
| |
| "A Martian!" said the curate. |
| |
| I listened again. |
| |
| "It was not like the Heat-Ray," I said, and for a time I was |
| inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled |
| against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of |
| Shepperton Church. |
| |
| Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or |
| four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light |
| filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through |
| a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in |
| the wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for |
| the first time. |
| |
| The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which |
| flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our |
| feet. Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the |
| top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor |
| was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the |
| house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was |
| evident the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting |
| vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, |
| pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the |
| wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured |
| supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range. |
| |
| As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the |
| body of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still |
| glowing cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as |
| possible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the |
| scullery. |
| |
| Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind. |
| |
| "The fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars, has |
| struck this house and buried us under the ruins!" |
| |
| For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered: |
| |
| "God have mercy upon us!" |
| |
| I heard him presently whimpering to himself. |
| |
| Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my |
| part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint |
| light of the kitchen door. I could just see the curate's face, a dim, |
| oval shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic |
| hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet |
| interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for |
| the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if |
| anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured |
| thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the |
| vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. Once the |
| light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely |
| dark. For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and |
| shivering, until our tired attention failed. . . . |
| |
| At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to |
| believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that |
| awakening. My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to |
| action. I told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way |
| towards the pantry. He made me no answer, but so soon as I began |
| eating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling |
| after me. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER TWO |
| |
| WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE |
| |
| After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have |
| dozed again, for when presently I looked round I was alone. The |
| thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered |
| for the curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of |
| the kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him across the |
| room, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the |
| Martians. His shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden |
| from me. |
| |
| I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine |
| shed; and the place rocked with that beating thud. Through the |
| aperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold |
| and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I |
| remained watching the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and |
| stepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered the |
| floor. |
| |
| I touched the curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass |
| of plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact. I |
| gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we |
| crouched motionless. Then I turned to see how much of our rampart |
| remained. The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open |
| in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was |
| able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet |
| suburban roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld. |
| |
| The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the |
| house we had first visited. The building had vanished, completely |
| smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder lay now |
| far beneath the original foundations--deep in a hole, already vastly |
| larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round |
| it had splashed under that tremendous impact--"splashed" is the only |
| word--and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent |
| houses. It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a |
| hammer. Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on |
| the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the |
| kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and |
| ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the |
| cylinder. Over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great |
| circular pit the Martians were engaged in making. The heavy beating |
| sound was evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright green |
| vapour drove up like a veil across our peephole. |
| |
| The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on |
| the farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped |
| shrubbery, one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its |
| occupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I |
| scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been |
| convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary |
| glittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation, and on account of |
| the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across |
| the heaped mould near it. |
| |
| The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was |
| one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling- |
| machines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous |
| impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first, it |
| presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, and |
| with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and |
| clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were retracted, |
| but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, |
| plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened |
| the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were lifted |
| out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it. |
| |
| Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did |
| not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The |
| fighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary |
| pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen |
| these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or |
| the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, |
| scarcely realise that living quality. |
| |
| I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first |
| pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had |
| evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and |
| there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff |
| tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an |
| altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing |
| these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here |
| simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have |
| created. They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a |
| Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have |
| been much better without them. |
| |
| At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a |
| machine, but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the |
| controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements |
| seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion. |
| But then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny, |
| leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and |
| the true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. With that |
| realisation my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real |
| Martians. Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the |
| first nausea no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I was |
| concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action. |
| |
| They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible |
| to conceive. They were huge round bodies--or, rather, heads--about |
| four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This |
| face had no nostrils--indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any |
| sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, |
| and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head |
| or body--I scarcely know how to speak of it--was the single tight |
| tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it |
| must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the |
| mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two |
| bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather |
| aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the HANDS. |
| Even as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be |
| endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with |
| the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. |
| There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon |
| them with some facility. |
| |
| The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since |
| shown, was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure |
| was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile |
| tentacles. Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth |
| opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused |
| by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only |
| too evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin. |
| |
| And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem |
| to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes |
| up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were |
| heads--merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much |
| less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other |
| creatures, and INJECTED it into their own veins. I have myself seen |
| this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I |
| may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure |
| even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from |
| a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run |
| directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . . |
| |
| The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at |
| the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our |
| carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit. |
| |
| The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are |
| undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and |
| energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies are |
| half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning |
| heterogeneous food into blood. The digestive processes and their |
| reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our |
| minds. Men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy |
| livers, or sound gastric glands. But the Martians were lifted above |
| all these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion. |
| |
| Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment |
| is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they |
| had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to |
| judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, |
| were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the |
| silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet |
| high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. |
| Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and |
| all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for |
| them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have |
| broken every bone in their bodies. |
| |
| And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place |
| certain further details which, although they were not all evident to |
| us at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them |
| to form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures. |
| |
| In three other points their physiology differed strangely from |
| ours. Their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man |
| sleeps. Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, |
| that periodical extinction was unknown to them. They had little or no |
| sense of fatigue, it would seem. On earth they could never have moved |
| without efort, yet even to the last they kept in action. In twenty- |
| four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth is |
| perhaps the case with the ants. |
| |
| In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the |
| Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the |
| tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A |
| young Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth |
| during the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially |
| BUDDED off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals |
| in the fresh-water polyp. |
| |
| In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of |
| increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly the |
| primitive method. Among the lower animals, up even to those first |
| cousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes |
| occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its |
| competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has |
| apparently been the case. |
| |
| It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of quasi- |
| scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did |
| forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian |
| condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or |
| December, 1893, in a long-defunct publication, the PALL MALL BUDGET, |
| and I recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called |
| PUNCH. He pointed out--writing in a foolish, facetious tone--that the |
| perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; |
| the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as |
| hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential |
| parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection |
| would lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the |
| coming ages. The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. Only one |
| other part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was |
| the hand, "teacher and agent of the brain." While the rest of the |
| body dwindled, the hands would grow larger. |
| |
| There is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians |
| we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression |
| of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is |
| quite credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not |
| unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the |
| latter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) |
| at the expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain |
| would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of |
| the emotional substratum of the human being. |
| |
| The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures |
| differed from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial |
| particular. Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on |
| earth, have either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary |
| science eliminated them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers |
| and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such |
| morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life. And speaking of |
| the differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may |
| allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed. |
| |
| Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green |
| for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the |
| seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with |
| them gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that known |
| popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition |
| with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a transitory |
| growth, and few people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the |
| red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. It spread up |
| the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, |
| and its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of |
| our triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout |
| the country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water. |
| |
| The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a |
| single round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual |
| range not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, |
| blue and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that |
| they communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is |
| asserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet |
| (written evidently by someone not an eye-witness of Martian actions) |
| to which I have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief |
| source of information concerning them. Now no surviving human being |
| saw so much of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to |
| myself for an accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I |
| watched them closely time after time, and that I have seen four, five, |
| and (once) six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately |
| complicated operations together without either sound or gesture. Their |
| peculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, |
| and was, I believe, in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of |
| air preparatory to the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to |
| at least an elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I |
| am convinced--as firmly as I am convinced of anything--that the |
| Martians interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. |
| And I have been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions. |
| Before the Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may |
| remember, I had written with some little vehemence against the |
| telepathic theory. |
| |
| The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and |
| decorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they |
| evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are, |
| but changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at |
| all seriously. Yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other |
| artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great |
| superiority over man lay. We men, with our bicycles and road-skates, |
| our Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are |
| just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked |
| out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing different |
| bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and |
| take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. And of their |
| appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the |
| curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human |
| devices in mechanism is absent--the WHEEL is absent; among all the |
| things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their |
| use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in locomotion. And |
| in this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth |
| Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients |
| to its development. And not only did the Martians either not know of |
| (which is incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their |
| apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or |
| relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to |
| one plane. Almost all the joints of the machinery present a |
| complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully |
| curved friction bearings. And while upon this matter of detail, it is |
| remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases |
| actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic |
| sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully |
| together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the |
| curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and |
| disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. Such quasi-muscles |
| abounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping |
| out of the slit, I watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed |
| infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the |
| sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving |
| feebly after their vast journey across space. |
| |
| While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, |
| and noting each strange detail of their form, the curate reminded me |
| of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned to a |
| scowling face, and silent, eloquent lips. He wanted the slit, which |
| permitted only one of us to peep through; and so I had to forego |
| watching them for a time while he enjoyed that privilege. |
| |
| When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put |
| together several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the |
| cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and |
| down on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, |
| emitting jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit, |
| excavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner. |
| This it was which had caused the regular beating noise, and the |
| rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped |
| and whistled as it worked. So far as I could see, the thing was |
| without a directing Martian at all. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER THREE |
| |
| THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT |
| |
| The arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole |
| into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the Martian |
| might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began |
| to feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of |
| the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at |
| first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery |
| in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger we |
| incurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. |
| And I recall now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite |
| danger in which we were between starvation and a still more terrible |
| death, we could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of |
| sight. We would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between |
| eagerness and the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and |
| thrust add kick, within a few inches of exposure. |
| |
| The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and |
| habits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only |
| accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to |
| hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity |
| of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made |
| to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and |
| intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in |
| restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I |
| verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought |
| his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would sit in the |
| darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his |
| importunities. He ate more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed |
| out that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the |
| Martians had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time |
| might presently come when we should need food. He ate and drank |
| impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals. He slept little. |
| |
| As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so |
| intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed |
| doing it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him |
| to reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of |
| pride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who |
| face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves. |
| |
| It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I |
| set them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped |
| the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash |
| of rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what |
| is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But |
| those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to |
| elemental things, will have a wider charity. |
| |
| And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, |
| snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the |
| pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the |
| unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to those |
| first new experiences of mine. After a long time I ventured back to |
| the peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the |
| occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines. These last |
| had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an |
| orderly manner about the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now |
| completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the |
| big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its |
| general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and |
| from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin |
| below. |
| |
| The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the |
| handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was |
| digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped |
| receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door |
| and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the |
| machine. Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin |
| along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me |
| by the mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little |
| thread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, |
| the handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended, |
| telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere |
| blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. |
| In another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight, |
| untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a |
| growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between |
| sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a |
| hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust |
| rose steadily until it topped the side of the pit. |
| |
| The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these |
| contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was |
| acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter |
| were indeed the living of the two things. |
| |
| The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were |
| brought to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with |
| all my ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that |
| we were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding down |
| the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate, |
| gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture |
| suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my |
| curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and |
| clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic |
| behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and |
| faint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that |
| came from the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering |
| scheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely |
| trying to the eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it |
| not at all. The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the |
| mound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a |
| fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, |
| stood across the corner of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of |
| the machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I |
| entertained at first only to dismiss. |
| |
| I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying |
| myself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a |
| Martian. As the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his |
| integument and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a |
| yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the |
| machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back. Then |
| something--something struggling violently--was lifted high against the |
| sky, a black, vague enigma against the starlight; and as this black |
| object came down again, I saw by the green brightness that it was a |
| man. For an instant he was clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, |
| middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been |
| walking the world, a man of considerable consequence. I could see his |
| staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain. He |
| vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And |
| then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the |
| Martians. |
| |
| I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands |
| over my ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been |
| crouching silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, |
| cried out quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after |
| me. |
| |
| That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our |
| orror and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt |
| an urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of |
| escape; but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider |
| our position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was quite |
| incapable of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed |
| him of all vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he had |
| already sunk to the level of an animal. But as the saying goes, I |
| gripped myself with both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could |
| face the facts, that terrible as our position was, there was as yet no |
| justification for absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the |
| possibility of the Martians making the pit nothing more than a |
| temporary encampment. Or even if they kept it permanently, they might |
| not consider it necessary to guard it, and a chance of escape might be |
| afforded us. I also weighed very carefully the possibility of our |
| digging a way out in a direction away from the pit, but the chances of |
| our emerging within sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at |
| first too great. And I should have had to do all the digging myself. |
| The curate would certainly have failed me. |
| |
| It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw |
| the lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the |
| Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall |
| for the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the |
| door, and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as |
| possible; but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the |
| loose earth collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost |
| heart, and lay down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no |
| spirit even to move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea |
| of escaping by excavation. |
| |
| It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that |
| at first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought |
| about by their overthrow through any human effort. But on the fourth |
| or fifth night I heard a sound like heavy guns. |
| |
| It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. |
| The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a |
| fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a |
| handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the |
| pit immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them. |
| Except for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and |
| patches of white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for |
| the clinking of the handling-machine, quite still. That night was a |
| beautiful serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the |
| sky to herself. I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it was |
| that made me listen. Then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly |
| like the sound of great guns. Six distinct reports I counted, and |
| after a long interval six again. And that was all. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FOUR |
| |
| THE DEATH OF THE CURATE |
| |
| It was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the |
| last time, and presently found myself alone. Instead of keeping close |
| to me and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back |
| into the scullery. I was struck by a sudden thought. I went back |
| quickly and quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard the |
| curate drinking. I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a |
| bottle of burgundy. |
| |
| For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor |
| and broke, and I desisted and rose. We stood panting and threatening |
| each other. In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and |
| told him of my determination to begin a discipline. I divided the |
| food in the pantry, into rations to last us ten days. I would not let |
| him eat any more that day. In the afternoon he made a feeble effort |
| to get at the food. I had been dozing, but in an instant I was awake. |
| All day and all night we sat face to face, I weary but resolute, and |
| he weeping and complaining of his immediate hunger. It was, I know, a |
| night and a day, but to me it seemed--it seems now--an inter- minable |
| length of time. |
| |
| And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. |
| For two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests. |
| There were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times when I |
| cajoled and persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with the last |
| bottle of burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which I could |
| get water. But neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed |
| beyond reason. He would neither desist from his attacks on the food |
| nor from his noisy babbling to himself. The rudimentary precautions |
| to keep our imprisonment endurable he would not observe. Slowly I |
| began to realise the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to |
| perceive that my sole companion in this close and sickly darkness was |
| a man insane. |
| |
| From certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind |
| wandered at times. I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept. |
| It sounds paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the weakness |
| and insanity of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane |
| man. |
| |
| On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and |
| nothing I could do would moderate his speech. |
| |
| "It is just, O God!" he would say, over and over again. "It is |
| just. On me and mine be the punishment laid. We have sinned, we have |
| fallen short. There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the |
| dust, and I held my peace. I preached acceptable folly--my God, what |
| folly!--when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and called |
| upon them to repent-repent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy . . |
| . ! The wine press of God!" |
| |
| Then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I withheld |
| from him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening. He began to |
| raise his voice--I prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on me--he |
| threatened he would shout and bring the Martians upon us. For a time |
| that scared me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of |
| escape beyond estimating. I defied him, although I felt no assurance |
| that he might not do this thing. But that day, at any rate, he did |
| not. He talked with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part |
| of the eighth and ninth days--threats, entreaties, mingled with a |
| torrent of half-sane and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham |
| of God's service, such as made me pity him. Then he slept awhile, and |
| began again with renewed strength, so loudly that I must needs make |
| him desist. |
| |
| "Be still!" I implored. |
| |
| He rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near |
| the copper. |
| |
| "I have been still too long," he said, in a tone that must have |
| reached the pit, "and now I must bear my witness. Woe unto this |
| unfaithful city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! To the inhabitants of |
| the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet----" |
| |
| "Shut up!" I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the |
| Martians should hear us. "For God's sake----" |
| |
| "Nay," shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing |
| likewise and extending his arms. "Speak! The word of the Lord is |
| upon me!" |
| |
| In three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen. |
| |
| "I must bear my witness! I go! It has already been too long |
| delayed." |
| |
| I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In |
| a flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was |
| halfway across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch |
| of humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He |
| went headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled |
| over him and stood panting. He lay still. |
| |
| Suddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping |
| plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. I |
| looked up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming |
| slowly across the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the |
| debris; another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. |
| I stood petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of glass plate |
| near the edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large |
| dark eyes of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of |
| tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole. |
| |
| I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the |
| scullery door. The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in |
| the room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this |
| way and that. For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful |
| advance. Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the |
| scullery. I trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright. I |
| opened the door of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness |
| staring at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening. |
| Had the Martian seen me? What was it doing now? |
| |
| Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and |
| then it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a |
| faint metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring. |
| Then a heavy body--I knew too well what--was dragged across the floor |
| of the kitchen towards the opening. Irresistibly attracted, I crept |
| to the door and peeped into the kitchen. In the triangle of bright |
| outer sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling- |
| machine, scrutinizing the curate's head. I thought at once that it |
| would infer my presence from the mark of the blow I had given him. |
| |
| I crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover |
| myself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible in the |
| darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. Every now and then I |
| paused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacles through |
| the opening again. |
| |
| Then the faint metallic jingle returned. I traced it slowly |
| feeling over the kitchen. Presently I heard it nearer--in the |
| scullery, as I judged. I thought that its length might be |
| insufficient to reach me. I prayed copiously. It passed, scraping |
| faintly across the cellar door. An age of almost intolerable suspense |
| intervened; then I heard it fumbling at the latch! It had found the |
| door! The Martians understood doors! |
| |
| It worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door |
| opened. |
| |
| In the darkness I could just see the thing--like an elephant's |
| trunk more than anything else--waving towards me and touching and |
| examining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black worm |
| swaying its blind head to and fro. |
| |
| Once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. I was on the verge of |
| screaming; I bit my hand. For a time the tentacle was silent. I |
| could have fancied it had been withdrawn. Presently, with an abrupt |
| click, it gripped something--I thought it had me!--and seemed to go |
| out of the cellar again. For a minute I was not sure. Apparently it |
| had taken a lump of coal to examine. |
| |
| I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which |
| had become cramped, and then listened. I whispered passionate prayers |
| for safety. |
| |
| Then I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again. |
| Slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and tapping |
| the furniture. |
| |
| While I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar |
| door and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry, and the biscuit- |
| tins rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against |
| the cellar door. Then silence that passed into an infinity of |
| suspense. |
| |
| Had it gone? |
| |
| At last I decided that it had. |
| |
| It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in |
| the close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even |
| to crawl out for the drink for which I craved. It was the eleventh day |
| before I ventured so far from my security. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER FIVE |
| |
| THE STILLNESS |
| |
| My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door |
| between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty; every |
| scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on |
| the previous day. At that discovery I despaired for the first time. I |
| took no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day. |
| |
| At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed |
| sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of |
| despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had |
| become deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear |
| from the pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to |
| crawl noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there. |
| |
| On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance |
| of alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that |
| stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and |
| tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened |
| by the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my |
| pumping. |
| |
| During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much |
| of the curate and of the manner of his death. |
| |
| On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and |
| thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of |
| escape. Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death |
| of the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a |
| keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light that came |
| into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered |
| imagination it seemed the colour of blood. |
| |
| On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised |
| to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the |
| hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson- |
| coloured obscurity. |
| |
| It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar |
| sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as |
| the snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a |
| dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This |
| greatly surprised me. At the scent of me he barked shortly. |
| |
| I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I |
| should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it |
| would be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the |
| attention of the Martians. |
| |
| I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly |
| withdrew his head and disappeared. |
| |
| I listened--I was not deaf--but certainly the pit was still. I |
| heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse |
| croaking, but that was all. |
| |
| For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to |
| move aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a |
| faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither |
| on the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but |
| that was all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out. |
| |
| Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought |
| over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was |
| not a living thing in the pit. |
| |
| I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery |
| had gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one |
| corner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the |
| skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in |
| the sand. |
| |
| Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the |
| mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the |
| north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The |
| pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish |
| afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of |
| escape had come. I began to tremble. |
| |
| I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate |
| resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to |
| the top of the mound in which I had been buried so long. |
| |
| I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was |
| visible. |
| |
| When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been |
| a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed |
| with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed |
| brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red |
| cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth |
| to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but |
| further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems. |
| |
| The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been |
| burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed |
| windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their |
| roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling |
| for its refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. |
| Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces |
| of men there were none. |
| |
| The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly |
| bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed |
| that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! |
| the sweetness of the air! |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SIX |
| |
| THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS |
| |
| For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my |
| safety. Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had |
| thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had |
| not realised what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated |
| this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see |
| Sheen in ruins--I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of |
| another planet. |
| |
| For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of |
| men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I |
| felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly |
| confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations |
| of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew |
| quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of |
| dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an |
| animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be |
| as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire |
| of man had passed away. |
| |
| But so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my |
| dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast. In the |
| direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch |
| of garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went knee- |
| deep, and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. The density of the |
| weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding. The wall was some six feet |
| high, and when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my |
| feet to the crest. So I went along by the side of it, and came to a |
| corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble |
| into the garden I coveted. Here I found some young onions, a couple |
| of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I |
| secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through |
| scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew--it was like walking through an |
| avenue of gigantic blood drops--possessed with two ideas: to get more |
| food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of |
| this accursed unearthly region of the pit. |
| |
| Some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which |
| also I devoured, and then I came upon a bron sheet of flowing shallow |
| water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served |
| only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a |
| hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the |
| tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary |
| growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of |
| unparalleled fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured down into the |
| water of the Wey and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water |
| fronds speedily choked both those rivers. |
| |
| At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a |
| tangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in |
| a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and |
| Twickenham. As the water spread the weed followed them, until the |
| ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red |
| swamp, whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the |
| Martians had caused was concealed. |
| |
| In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had |
| spread. A cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of |
| certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of |
| natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting |
| power against bacterial diseases--they never succumb without a severe |
| struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. The |
| fronds became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. They broke |
| off at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early |
| growth carried their last vestiges out to sea. |
| |
| My first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my |
| thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed |
| some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly, |
| metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to |
| wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the |
| flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to |
| Mortlake. I managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins |
| of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out of this |
| spate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came |
| out on Putney Common. |
| |
| Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the |
| wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation |
| of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly |
| undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors |
| closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if |
| their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less abundant; the |
| tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted |
| for food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple |
| of silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked. |
| I rested for the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery, being, in |
| my enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on. |
| |
| All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians. |
| I encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried |
| circuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton I |
| had seen two human skeletons--not bodies, but skeletons, picked |
| clean--and in the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones |
| of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep. But though I |
| gnawed parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from |
| them. |
| |
| After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where I |
| think the Heat-Ray must have been used for some reason. And in the |
| garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes, |
| sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked down upon |
| Putney and the river. The aspect of the place in the dusk was |
| singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and |
| down the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the |
| weed. And over all--silence. It filled me with indescribable terror |
| to think how swiftly that desolating change had come. |
| |
| For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, |
| and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard by the |
| top of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms |
| dislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body. As I |
| proceeded I became more and more convinced that the extermination of |
| mankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished |
| in this part of the world. The Martians, I thought, had gone on and |
| left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps even now |
| they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone |
| northward. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER SEVEN |
| |
| THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL |
| |
| I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney |
| Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to |
| Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into |
| that house--afterwards I found the front door was on the latch--nor |
| how I ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of |
| despair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom, I found a |
| rat-gnawed crust and two tins of pineapple. The place had been |
| already searched and emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some |
| biscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked. The latter I could |
| not eat, they were too rotten, but the former not only stayed my |
| hunger, but filled my pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian |
| might come beating that part of London for food in the night. Before |
| I went to bed I had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from |
| window to window, peering out for some sign of these monsters. I |
| slept little. As I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively-- |
| a thing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the |
| curate. During all the intervening time my mental condition had been |
| a hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid |
| receptivity. But in the night my brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the |
| food I had eaten, grew clear again, and I thought. |
| |
| Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of |
| the curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of |
| my wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to |
| recall; I saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely |
| disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself |
| then as I see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, |
| the creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I |
| felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted |
| me. In the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of |
| God that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood |
| my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I |
| retraced every step of our conversation from the moment when I had |
| found him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to |
| the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We |
| had been incapable of co-operation--grim chance had taken no heed of |
| that. Had I foreseen, I should have left him at Halliford. But I did |
| not foresee; and crime is to foresee and do. And I set this down as I |
| have set all this story down, as it was. There were no witnesses--all |
| these things I might have concealed. But I set it down, and the |
| reader must form his judgment as he will. |
| |
| And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate |
| body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. For |
| the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so, |
| unhappily, I could for the latter. And suddenly that night became |
| terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I |
| found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and |
| painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from |
| Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, |
| had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now |
| I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with |
| the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon |
| as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house |
| like a rat leaving its hiding place--a creature scarcely larger, an |
| inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters |
| might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to |
| God. Surely, ixf we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us |
| pity--pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion. |
| |
| The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, |
| and was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs from |
| the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of |
| the panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night |
| after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart |
| inscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with |
| a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat |
| trampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot |
| of blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. My |
| movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of |
| going to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest |
| chance of finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them |
| suddenly, my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to |
| me I might find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled. I |
| knew I wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the |
| world of men, but I had no clear idea how the finding might be done. I |
| was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner |
| I went, under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of |
| Wimbledon Common, stretching wide and far. |
| |
| That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; |
| there was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the |
| verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and |
| vitality. I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place |
| among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from |
| their stout resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an |
| odd feeling of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a |
| clump of bushes. I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, |
| and it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached |
| him slowly. He stood silent and motionless, regarding me. |
| |
| As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and |
| filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged |
| through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches |
| mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His |
| black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and |
| sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut |
| across the lower part of his face. |
| |
| "Stop!" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I |
| stopped. His voice was hoarse. "Where do you come from?" he said. |
| |
| I thought, surveying him. |
| |
| "I come from Mortlake," I said. "I was buried near the pit the |
| Martians made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and |
| escaped." |
| |
| "There is no food about here," he said. "This is my country. All |
| this hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge |
| of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?" |
| |
| I answered slowly. |
| |
| "I don't know," I said. "I have been buried in the ruins of a |
| house thirteen or fourteen days. I don't know what has happened." |
| |
| He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed |
| expression. |
| |
| "I've no wish to stop about here," said I. "I think I shall go to |
| Leatherhead, for my wife was there." |
| |
| He shot out a pointing finger. |
| |
| "It is you," said he; "the man from Woking. And you weren't killed |
| at Weybridge?" |
| |
| I recognised him at the same moment. |
| |
| "You are the artilleryman who came into my garden." |
| |
| "Good luck!" he said. "We are lucky ones! Fancy YOU!" He put out |
| a hand, and I took it. "I crawled up a drain," he said. "But they |
| didn't kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards |
| Walton across the fields. But---- It's not sixteen days altogether-- |
| and your hair is grey." He looked over his shoulder suddenly. "Only |
| a rook," he said. "One gets to know that birds have shadows these |
| days. This is a bit open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk." |
| |
| "Have you seen any Martians?" I said. "Since I crawled out----" |
| |
| "They've gone away across London," he said. "I guess they've got a |
| bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky |
| is alive with their lights. It's like a great city, and in the glare |
| you can just see them moving. By daylight you can't. But nearer--I |
| haven't seen them--" (he counted on his fingers) "five days. Then I |
| saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the |
| night before last"--he stopped and spoke impressively--"it was just a |
| matter of lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe |
| they've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly." |
| |
| I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes. |
| |
| "Fly!" |
| |
| "Yes," he said, "fly." |
| |
| I went on into a little bower, and sat down. |
| |
| "It is all over with humanity," I said. "If they can do that they |
| will simply go round the world." |
| |
| He nodded. |
| |
| "They will. But---- It will relieve things over here a bit. And |
| besides----" He looked at me. "Aren't you satisfied it IS up with |
| humanity? I am. We're down; we're beat." |
| |
| I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact-- |
| a fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a |
| vague hope; rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated |
| his words, "We're beat." They carried absolute conviction. |
| |
| "It's all over," he said. "They've lost ONE--just ONE. And they've |
| made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world. |
| They've walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an |
| accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These |
| green stars--I've seen none these five or six days, but I've no doubt |
| they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're |
| under! We're beat!" |
| |
| I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to |
| devise some countervailing thought. |
| |
| "This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, |
| any more than there's war between man and ants." |
| |
| Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory. |
| |
| "After the tenth shot they fired no more--at least, until the first |
| cylinder came." |
| |
| "How do you know?" said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought. |
| "Something wrong with the gun," he said. "But what if there is? |
| They'll get it right again. And even if there's a delay, how can it |
| alter the end? It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds their |
| cities, live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want |
| them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we |
| are now--just ants. Only----" |
| |
| "Yes," I sid. |
| |
| "We're eatable ants." |
| |
| We sat looking at each other. |
| |
| "And what will they do with us?" I said. |
| |
| "That's what I've been thinking," he said; "that's what I've been |
| thinking. After Weybridge I went south--thinking. I saw what was up. |
| Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves. |
| But I'm not so fond of squealing. I've been in sight of death once or |
| twice; I'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst, |
| death--it's just death. And it's the man that keeps on thinking comes |
| through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I, "Food won't |
| last this way," and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like |
| a sparrow goes for man. All round"--he waved a hand to the |
| horizon--"they're starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other. |
| . . ." |
| |
| He saw my face, and halted awkwardly. |
| |
| "No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France," he said. He |
| seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on: |
| "There's food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines, spirits, |
| mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was |
| telling you what I was thinking. "Here's intelligent things," I said, |
| "and it seems they want us for food. First, they'll smash us up-- |
| ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All |
| that will go. If we were the size of ants we might pull through. But |
| we're not. It's all too bulky to stop. That's the first certainty." |
| Eh?" |
| |
| I assented. |
| |
| "It is; I've thought it out. Very well, then--next; at present |
| we're caught as we're wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles to |
| get a crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, |
| picking houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they |
| won't keep on doing that. So soon as they've settled all our guns and |
| ships, and smashed our railways, and done all the things they are |
| doing over there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the |
| best and storing us in cages and things. That's what they will start |
| doing in a bit. Lord! They haven't begun on us yet. Don't you see |
| that?" |
| |
| "Not begun!" I exclaimed. |
| |
| "Not begun. All that's happened so far is through our not having |
| the sense to keep quiet--worrying them with guns and such foolery. And |
| losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any |
| more safety than where we were. They don't want to bother us yet. |
| They're making their things--making all the things they couldn't bring |
| with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very |
| likely that's why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of |
| hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing about blind, |
| on the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, |
| we've got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs. |
| That's how I figure it out. It isn't quite according to what a man |
| wants for his species, but it's about what the facts point to. And |
| that's the principle I acted upon. Cities, nations, civilisation, |
| progress--it's all over. That game's up. We're beat." |
| |
| "But if that is so, what is there to live for?" |
| |
| The artilleryman looked at me for a moment. |
| |
| "There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or |
| so; there won't be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds |
| at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is |
| up. If you've got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating |
| peas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck 'em away. |
| They ain't no further use." |
| |
| "You mean----" |
| |
| "I mean that men like me are going on living--for the sake of the |
| breed. I tell you, I'm grim set on living. And if I'm not mistaken, |
| you'll show what insides YOU'VE got, too, before long. We aren't |
| going to be exterminated. And I don't mean to be caught either, and |
| tamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those |
| brown creepers!" |
| |
| "You don't mean to say----" |
| |
| "I do. I'm going on, under their feet. I've got it planned; I've |
| thought it out. We men are beat. We don't know enough. We've got to |
| learn before we've got a chance. And we've got to live and keep |
| independent while we learn. See! That's what has to be done." |
| |
| I stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man's |
| resolution. |
| |
| "Great God!," cried I. "But you are a man indeed!" And suddenly I |
| gripped his hand. |
| |
| "Eh!" he said, with his eyes shining. "I've thought it out, eh?" |
| |
| "Go on," I said. |
| |
| "Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I'm |
| getting ready. Mind you, it isn't all of us that are made for wild |
| beasts; and that's what it's got to be. That's why I watched you. I |
| had my doubts. You're slender. I didn't know that it was you, you |
| see, or just how you'd been buried. All these--the sort of people |
| that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used |
| to live down that way--they'd be no good. They haven't any spirit in |
| them--no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or |
| the other--Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used |
| to skedaddle off to work--I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast |
| in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket |
| train, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at |
| businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; |
| skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner; keeping |
| indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with |
| the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they |
| had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little |
| miserable skedaddle through the world. Lives insured and a bit |
| invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundays--fear of the |
| hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will |
| just be a godend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful |
| breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing about the fields and |
| lands on empty stomachs, they'll come and be caught cheerful. They'll |
| be quite glad after a bit. They'll wonder what people did before |
| there were Martians to take care of them. And the bar loafers, and |
| mashers, and singers--I can imagine them. I can imagine them," he |
| said, with a sort of sombre gratification. "There'll be any amount of |
| sentiment and religion loose among them. There's hundreds of things I |
| saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these last few |
| days. There's lots will take things as they are--fat and stupid; and |
| lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong, and |
| that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things are so |
| that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, |
| and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make |
| for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit |
| to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you've seen the |
| same thing. It's energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside |
| out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And |
| those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of--what is it?-- |
| eroticism." |
| |
| He paused. |
| |
| "Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train |
| them to do tricks--who knows?--get sentimental over the pet boy who |
| grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to |
| hunt us." |
| |
| "No," I cried, "that's impossible! No human being----" |
| |
| "What's the good of going on with such lies?" said the |
| artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What nonsense to |
| pretend there isn't!" |
| |
| And I succumbed to his conviction. |
| |
| "If they come after me," he said; "Lord, if they come after me!" |
| and subsided into a grim meditation. |
| |
| I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring |
| against this man's reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one |
| would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his--I, a |
| professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a |
| common soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that I |
| had scarcely realised. |
| |
| "What are you doing?" I said presently. "What plans have you |
| made?" |
| |
| He hesitated. |
| |
| "Well, it's like this," he said. "What have we to do? We have to |
| invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be |
| sufficiently secure to bring the children up. Yes--wait a bit, and |
| I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done. The tame ones will |
| go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big, |
| beautiful, rich-blooded, stupid--rubbish! The risk is that we who keep |
| wild will go savage--degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . |
| You see, how I mean to live is underground. I've been thinking about |
| the drains. Of course those who don't know drains think horrible |
| things; but under this London are miles and miles--hundreds of miles-- |
| and a few days rain and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. |
| The main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then |
| there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may be |
| made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You |
| begin to see? And we form a band--able-bodied, clean-minded men. We're |
| not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out |
| again." |
| |
| "As you meant me to go?" |
| |
| "Well--l parleyed, didn't I?" |
| |
| "We won't quarrel about that. Go on." |
| |
| "Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we |
| want also--mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies--no blasted |
| rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, |
| and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They |
| ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of |
| disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be |
| happy. Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it |
| bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be |
| London. And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the |
| open when the Martians keep away. Play cricket, perhaps. That's how |
| we shall save the race. Eh? It's a possible thing? But saving the |
| race is nothing in itself. As I say, that's only being rats. It's |
| saving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing. There men like |
| you come in. There's books, there's models. We must make great safe |
| places down deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry |
| swipes, but ideas, science books. That's where men like you come in. |
| We must go to the British Museum and pick all those books through. |
| Especially we must keep up our science--learn more. We must watch |
| these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it's all working, |
| perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we must |
| leave the Martians alone. We mustn't even steal. If we get in their |
| way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know. |
| But they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they |
| have all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin." |
| |
| The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm. |
| |
| "After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before--Just |
| imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly |
| starting off--Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em. Not |
| a Martian in 'em, but men--men who have learned the way how. It may |
| be in my time, even--those men. Fancy having one of them lovely |
| things, with its Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! |
| What would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the |
| run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open their |
| beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see them |
| hurrying, hurrying--puffing and blowing and hooting to their other |
| mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case. And swish, |
| bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, SWISH comes |
| the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own." |
| |
| For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the |
| tone of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my |
| mind. I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny |
| and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader |
| who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, |
| reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, |
| crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening, distracted by |
| apprehension. We talked in this manner through the early morning |
| time, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky |
| for Martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where |
| he had made his lair. It was the coal cellar of the place, and when I |
| saw the work he had spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten |
| yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney |
| Hill--I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his |
| powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a day. But I believed in him |
| sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at |
| his digging. We had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed |
| against the kitchen range. We refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock- |
| turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. I found a curious |
| relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labour. |
| As we worked, I turned his project over in my mind, and presently |
| objections and doubts began to arise; but I worked there all the |
| morning, so glad was I to find myself with a purpose again. After |
| working an hour I began to speculate on the distance one had to go |
| before the cloaca was reached, the chances we had of missing it |
| altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should dig this long |
| tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of |
| the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to me, too, that |
| the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a needless length of |
| tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these things, the |
| artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me. |
| |
| "We're working well," he said. He put down his spade. "Let us |
| knock off a bit" he said. "I think it's time we reconnoitred from the |
| roof of the house." |
| |
| I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his |
| spade; and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so |
| did he at once. |
| |
| "Why were you walking about the common," I said, "instead of being |
| here?" |
| |
| "Taking the air," he said. "I was coming back. It's safer by |
| night." |
| |
| "But the work?" |
| |
| "Oh, one can't always work," he said, and in a flash I saw the man |
| plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. "We ought to reconnoitre |
| now," he said, "because if any come near they may hear the spades and |
| drop upon us unawares." |
| |
| I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof |
| and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were |
| to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under |
| shelter of the parapet. |
| |
| From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney, |
| but we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the |
| low parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the |
| trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and |
| dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was |
| strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing |
| water for their propagation. About us neither had gained a footing; |
| laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of |
| laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond |
| Kensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the |
| northward hills. |
| |
| The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still |
| remained in London. |
| |
| "One night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric light |
| in order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze, |
| crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and |
| shouting till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came |
| they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham |
| and looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It |
| must have given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road |
| towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened |
| to run away." |
| |
| Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe! |
| |
| From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his |
| grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently |
| of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than |
| half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to |
| understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid |
| on doing nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no |
| question that he personally was to capture and fight the great |
| machine. |
| |
| After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed |
| disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was |
| nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had |
| eaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit |
| these, and his optimism glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming |
| as a great occasion. |
| |
| "There's some champane in the cellar," he said. |
| |
| "We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy," said I. |
| |
| "No," said he; "I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We've a |
| heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength |
| while we may. Look at these blistered hands!" |
| |
| And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing |
| cards after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing |
| London between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we |
| played for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to |
| the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable, |
| I found the card game and several others we played extremely |
| interesting. |
| |
| Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of |
| extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before |
| us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the |
| chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid |
| delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough |
| chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a |
| lamp. |
| |
| After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the |
| artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. |
| He was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had |
| encountered in the morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a |
| less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with |
| my health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable |
| intermittence. I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights |
| of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the Highgate |
| hills. |
| |
| At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The |
| northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington |
| glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed |
| up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was |
| black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet- |
| purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a |
| space I could not understand it, and then I knew that it must be the |
| red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that |
| realisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of |
| things, awoke again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear, |
| glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the |
| darkness of Hampstead and Highgate. |
| |
| I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the |
| grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the |
| midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent |
| revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a |
| certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring |
| exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was |
| filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined |
| dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into |
| London. There, it seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning |
| what the Martians and my fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the |
| roof when the late moon rose. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER EIGHT |
| |
| DEAD LONDON |
| |
| After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and |
| by the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was |
| tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its |
| fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that |
| presently removed it so swiftly. |
| |
| At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I |
| found a man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust, |
| alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing |
| from him but curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should |
| have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face. |
| |
| There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and |
| it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I got |
| food--sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable--in a baker's shop |
| here. Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of |
| powder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of |
| the burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the |
| streets were quiet again. |
| |
| Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon |
| dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the |
| Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly |
| past them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their |
| outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs. |
| |
| Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in |
| the City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds |
| drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers |
| had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine |
| shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but |
| apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains |
| and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch |
| them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the |
| hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown |
| dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the |
| pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead. |
| |
| The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the |
| stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the |
| stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction |
| that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis, |
| and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these |
| houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and |
| derelict. . . . |
| |
| In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black |
| powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. |
| It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing |
| alternation of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on |
| perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in |
| volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off |
| again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. I stopped, |
| staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote |
| wailing. It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice |
| for its fear and solitude. |
| |
| "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note--great waves |
| of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall |
| buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the |
| iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural |
| History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in |
| order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground, |
| where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition |
| Road. All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and |
| still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At |
| the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight--a bus |
| overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over |
| this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. |
| The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above |
| the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to |
| the northwest. |
| |
| "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to |
| me, from the district about Regent's Park. The desolating cry worked |
| upon my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The wailing |
| took possession of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and |
| now again hungry and thirsty. |
| |
| It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city |
| of the dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and |
| in its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old |
| friends that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in |
| the chemists' shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I |
| recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew, |
| shared the city with myself. . . . |
| |
| I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were |
| black powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the |
| gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty |
| after the heat of my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to |
| break into a public-house and get food and drink. I was weary after |
| eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black |
| horsehair sofa I found there. |
| |
| I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, "Ulla, ulla, |
| ulla, ulla." It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some |
| biscuits and a cheese in the bar--there was a meat safe, but it |
| contained nothing but maggots--I wandered on through the silent |
| residential squares to Baker Street--Portman Square is the only one I |
| can name--and so came out at last upon Regent's Park. And as I |
| emerged from the top of Baker Street, I saw far away over the trees in |
| the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which |
| this howling proceeded. I was not terrified. I came upon him as if |
| it were a matter of course. I watched him for some time, but he did |
| not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that |
| I could discover. |
| |
| I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of |
| "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired |
| to be very fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason |
| of this monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the |
| park and struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went |
| along under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this |
| stationary, howling Martian from the direction of St. John's Wood. A |
| couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus, |
| and saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws |
| coming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in |
| pursuit of him. He made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared |
| I might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the |
| silent road, the wailing sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," reasserted |
| itself. |
| |
| I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John's Wood |
| station. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. It |
| was only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this |
| mechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and |
| twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart was shattered. It |
| seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been |
| overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might |
| have happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its |
| Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the |
| twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat |
| was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had |
| left, were invisible to me. |
| |
| Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards |
| Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second |
| Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the |
| Zoological Gardens, and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the |
| smashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found the |
| Regent's Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation. |
| |
| As I crossed the bridge, the sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," |
| ceased. It was, as it were, cut off. The silence came like a |
| thunderclap. |
| |
| The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees |
| towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed |
| clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness. |
| Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while |
| that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; |
| by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life |
| about me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of |
| something--I knew not what--and then a stillness that could be felt. |
| Nothing but this gaunt quiet. |
| |
| London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white |
| houses were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me my imagination |
| found a thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a horror |
| of my temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black as though |
| it was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. I |
| could not bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John's Wood Road, |
| and ran headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn. I |
| hid from the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a |
| cabmen's shelter in Harrow Road. But before the dawn my courage |
| returned, and while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more |
| towards Regent's Park. I missed my way among the streets, and |
| presently saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, |
| the curve of Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up to the fading |
| stars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless like the others. |
| |
| An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I |
| would save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on |
| recklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the |
| light grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and |
| clustering about the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I began |
| running along the road. |
| |
| I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund's Terrace (I |
| waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from |
| the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass |
| before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the |
| crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it--it was the final and |
| largest place the Martians had made--and from behind these heaps there |
| rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager dog |
| ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew |
| real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling |
| exultation, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out |
| of the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds |
| pecked and tore. |
| |
| In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood |
| upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A |
| mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, |
| huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered |
| about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid |
| handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a |
| row, were the Martians--DEAD!--slain by the putrefactive and disease |
| bacteria against whic their systems were unprepared; slain as the red |
| weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by |
| the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. |
| |
| For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have |
| foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs |
| of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things-- |
| taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by |
| virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed |
| resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to |
| many--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance --our |
| living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in |
| Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and |
| fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already |
| when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting |
| even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a |
| billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is |
| his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten |
| times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. |
| |
| Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in |
| that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have |
| seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also |
| at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that |
| these things that had been alve and so terrible to men were dead. For |
| a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been |
| repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain |
| them in the night. |
| |
| I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, |
| even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his |
| rays. The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and |
| wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their |
| tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows |
| towards the light. A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the |
| bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across |
| the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great |
| flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser |
| atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a |
| day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the |
| huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the |
| tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned |
| seats on the summit of Primrose Hill. |
| |
| I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed |
| now in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen |
| overnight, just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even |
| as it had been crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to |
| die, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its |
| machinery was exhausted. They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of |
| shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun. |
| |
| All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting |
| destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only |
| seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine |
| the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses. |
| |
| Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the |
| splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear |
| sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs |
| caught the light and glared with a white intensity. |
| |
| Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses; |
| westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the |
| Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park, the Langham Hotel, the |
| dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant |
| mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the |
| sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far |
| away and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal |
| Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul's was |
| dark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a |
| huge gaping cavity on its western side. |
| |
| And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and |
| churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous |
| hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to |
| build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that |
| had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled |
| back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast |
| dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of |
| emotion that was near akin to tears. |
| |
| The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The |
| survivors of the people scattered over the country--leaderless, |
| lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd--the thousands who |
| had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing |
| stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour |
| across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of |
| the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened |
| skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the |
| hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and |
| ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended |
| my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought |
| I--in a year. . . |
| |
| With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and |
| the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER NINE |
| |
| WRECKAGE |
| |
| And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is |
| not altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, |
| all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and |
| praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget. |
| |
| Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, |
| so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow, |
| several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the |
| previous night. One man--the first--had gone to St. Martin's-le- |
| Grand, and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to |
| telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the |
| world; a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly |
| flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, |
| Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the |
| verge of the pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, |
| shouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making |
| up trains, even as near as Crewe, to descen upon London. The church |
| bells that had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, |
| until all England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, |
| unkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unhoped |
| deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for |
| the food! Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the |
| Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief. All the |
| shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days. But of |
| all this I have no memory. I drifted--a demented man. I found myself |
| in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day |
| wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood. |
| They have told me since that I was singing some insane doggerel about |
| "The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!" Troubled |
| as they were with their own affairs, these people, whose name, much as |
| I would like to express my gratitude to them, I may not even give |
| here, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and |
| protected me from myself. Apparently they had learned something of my |
| story from me during the days of my lapse. |
| |
| Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me |
| what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I |
| was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a |
| Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any |
| provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness |
| of power. |
| |
| I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely |
| man and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four |
| days after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing |
| craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that |
| seemed so happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire |
| to feast upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could |
| to divert me from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the |
| impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and |
| parting, as I will confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I |
| went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and |
| strange and empty. |
| |
| Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there |
| were shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water. |
| |
| I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my |
| melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the |
| streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were |
| abroad everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed |
| incredible that any great proportion of the population could have been |
| slain. But then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I |
| met, how shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, |
| and that every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces |
| seemed all with one of two expressions--a leaping exultation and |
| energy or a grim resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, |
| London seemed a city of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately |
| distributing bread sent us by the French government. The ribs of the |
| few horses showed dismally. Haggard special constables with white |
| badges stood at the corners of every street. I saw little of the |
| mischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street, |
| and there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of |
| Waterloo Bridge. |
| |
| At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts |
| of that grotesque time--a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket |
| of the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was |
| the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication--the DAILY |
| MAIL. I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. |
| Most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing |
| had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement |
| stereo on the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the |
| news organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned |
| nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the |
| Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other |
| things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time, |
| that the "Secret of Flying," was discovered. At Waterloo I found the |
| free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush |
| was already over. There were few people in the train, and I was in no |
| mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat |
| with folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed |
| past the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over |
| temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were |
| blackened ruins. To Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy |
| with powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms |
| and rain, and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again; |
| there were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by |
| side with the customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty |
| relaying. |
| |
| All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt |
| and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue |
| of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along |
| the line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped |
| mass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled |
| cabbage. The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons |
| of the red climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in |
| certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the |
| sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing about it, and some |
| sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, |
| flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were |
| everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut |
| with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went |
| with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the |
| foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills. |
| |
| The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing |
| repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to |
| Maybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the |
| hussars, and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in |
| the thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find, |
| among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the |
| whitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood |
| regarding these vestiges. . . . |
| |
| Then I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here |
| and there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found |
| burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an |
| open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed. |
| |
| I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded |
| immediately. The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening |
| slowly as I approached. |
| |
| It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the |
| open wxindow from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No |
| one had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left |
| them nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house |
| felt empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had |
| crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the |
| catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs. |
| |
| I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table |
| still, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had |
| left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I |
| stood reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the |
| probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the |
| civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a |
| prophecy: "In about two hundred years," I had written, "we may |
| expect----" The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my inability |
| to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had |
| broken off to get my DAILY CHRONICLE from the newsboy. I remembered |
| how I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had |
| listened to his odd story of "Men from Mars." |
| |
| I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton |
| and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle |
| overturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was |
| desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so |
| long. And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no use," said a |
| voice. "The house is deserted. No one has been here these ten days. |
| Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but you." |
| |
| I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the |
| French window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood |
| looking out. |
| |
| And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, |
| were my cousin and my wife--my wife white and tearless. She gave a |
| faint cry. |
| |
| "I came," she said. "I knew--knew----" |
| |
| She put her hand to her throat--swayed. I made a step forward, and |
| caught her in my arms. |
| |
| |
| |
| CHAPTER TEN |
| |
| THE EPILOGUE |
| |
| I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little |
| I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable |
| questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly |
| provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy. |
| My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, |
| but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the |
| rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as |
| a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative. |
| |
| At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined |
| after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial |
| species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the |
| reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance |
| of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no |
| means a proven conclusion. |
| |
| Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the |
| Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the Heat- |
| Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South |
| Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further |
| investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder |
| points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a |
| brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that |
| it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with |
| deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven |
| speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to |
| whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted |
| down the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at |
| the time, and now none is forthcoming. |
| |
| The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far |
| as the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have |
| already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and |
| almost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and |
| the countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that |
| the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific. |
| |
| A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of |
| another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough |
| attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present the |
| planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I, |
| for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. In any case, we |
| should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to |
| define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to |
| keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate |
| the arrival of the next attack. |
| |
| In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or |
| artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge, |
| or they mght be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw |
| opened. It seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the |
| failure of their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the same |
| light. |
| |
| Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the |
| Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet |
| Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with |
| the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view |
| of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous |
| marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and |
| almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character |
| was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk. One needs to see |
| the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their |
| remarkable resemblance in character. |
| |
| At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views |
| of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have |
| learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a |
| secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good |
| or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that |
| in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not |
| without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene |
| confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of |
| decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and |
| it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of |
| mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians |
| have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their |
| lesson, and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer |
| settlement. Be that as it may, for many years yet there will |
| certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, |
| and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with |
| them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men. |
| |
| The broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be |
| exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion |
| that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty |
| surface of our minute sphere. Now we see further. If the Martians can |
| reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is |
| impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this |
| earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread |
| of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our |
| sister planet within its toils. |
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| Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of |
| life spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system |
| throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a |
| remote dream. It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of |
| the Matians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is |
| the future ordained. |
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| I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an |
| abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study |
| writing by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley |
| below set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me |
| empty and desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass |
| me, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a |
| bicycle, children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and |
| unreal, and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot, |
| brooding silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the |
| silent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they |
| rise upon me tattered and dog-bitten. They gibber and grow fiercer, |
| paler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold |
| and wretched, in the darkness of the night. |
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| I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the |
| Strand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of |
| the past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched, |
| going to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a |
| galvanised body. And strange, too, it is to stand on Primrose Hill, |
| as I did but a day before writing this last chapter, to see the great |
| province of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the smoke and |
| mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people |
| walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the |
| sight-seers about the Martian machine that stands there still, to hear |
| the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when I saw it |
| all bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn of that last |
| great day. . . . |
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| And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think |
| that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead. |
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| End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells |
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