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 busi- ness. 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 un- exceptional 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 straw- berries,
for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusi- astic. 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 stereo- typed 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 bel- ligerent, 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 cylin- der 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 peo- ple
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 By-
fleet 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 Mar- tians 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 peace-
ful 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 forebodings 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 thunder- storm 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 broad- cloth 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 drench- ing 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
im- penetrably 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, gro- tesque 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 conflagra- tion 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 dis- gorged 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 ma- chines, 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 over 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 com- mand the sand pits, and its arrival
it was that had precipi- tated 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 artillery- man, 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 dis- tinct. 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 win- dow 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 Leather- head; and so greatly had the strength of the Martians
im- pressed me that I had determined to take my wife to New- haven,
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 cylin- der, 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 our- selves, 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 tem- porary 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 Hus- sars, 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 morn- ing,"
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 non-
sense!"
"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 south-
ward. 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 cot- tage. 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 sun- light. 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 direc- tion.
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 wag- gons, 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 every- where, the most astonishing miscellany
of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants of the
place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed, were
pack- ing, 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 celebra- tion, 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 bur- dens; one husband and wife were
even carrying a small out- house 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, doubt-
fully. 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, flour- ished 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 sur- face. 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 wad- ing 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 frag- ments 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 Shep- perton. 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, smash- ing
it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved
aside, blundered on and collapsed with tre- mendous 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 tu- multuous 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, inter- mittently 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 alto- gether. 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,
tu- multuous ruins of their comrade.
The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two
hundred yards from me, the other towards Lale- ham. 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 con- flict 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 trees 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, hiss- ing water towards the shore.
Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly,
in full sight of the Mar- tians, 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 carry- ing 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 terres- trial weapons,
the Martians retreated to their original position upon Horsell Common;
and in their haste, and encumbered with the de'bris 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 encamp- ment 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 Mar- tians 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 Addle- stone 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 under-
stand. 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 down- stream 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 sev- eral 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 with- out 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 Mar- tians?"
"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--every- thing 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 de- mented.
"The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!" he
shouted.
His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direc- tion 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
every- where? 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, inter-
rupting 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
min- isters 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, earth- works are being
thrown up and guns are being placed. Pres- ently 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 Shepper- ton 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: "Formi- dable as they seem to be, the
Martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen,
and, indeed, seem incapa- ble 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.....
Continua
>>>>>
|