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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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