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
themselves 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
volume 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 intelligences 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 spirit =

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 planet it had occurred 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 seemed
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 another 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 manlike 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 nineteenth 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 =

then came the night of the first 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 hole 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 was certainly no
breeze stirring 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 cylinder was artificial hollow with
an end that screwed 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 =

henderson he called you saw 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 no 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 =

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 tablelike end
of the cylinder which was still as ogilvy and henderson had left it i
fancy the popular expectation of a heap 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 walked 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 shadow 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 people 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
=

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 about 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 young 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 astonishment 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 strange 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 object
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 =

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 brutes 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 began 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 smoke 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
forthwith 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 surprise
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 =

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 woking 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 new comers 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 =

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 =

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
cylinder 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 =

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 =

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 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 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 treetops 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 =

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 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 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 =

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 artilleryman 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 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 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 =

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 =

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 despatched 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 fight ing 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 despatch 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 despatch 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 =

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 gun powder 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 were organized
disciplined 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 out houses 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 =

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 brother 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 =

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 iron clads 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