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       THE WAR OF THE WORLDS        --H. G. Wells         (1898)                          




                               BOOK ONE                                     
                      THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS                            

                But who shall dwell in these worlds                         
                if they be inhabited?...                                    
                Are we or they Lords of the World?...                       
                And how are all things made for man?                        

                                 Kepler                                     
                                 quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy        



                              CHAPTER 1                                     
                          THE EVE OF THE WAR                                

   No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth           
century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by             
intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as      
men busied themselves about their various concerns they were                
scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a         
microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and          
multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and      
fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their             
assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the              
infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to        
the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of         
them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or            
improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those      
departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other        
men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a        
missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to      
our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects        
vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious           
eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early          
in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.                    
   The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves             
about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light        
and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by        
this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older      
than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life        
upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is            
scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have                   
accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could              
begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the               
support of animated existence.                                              
   Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer,        
up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea            
that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at          
all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that         
since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the          
superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that      
it is not only more distant from life's beginning but nearer its end.       
   The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has            
already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition          
is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its                
equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our      
coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its              
oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as      
its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either          
pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of      
exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a            
present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate              
pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged             
their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with      
instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of,         
they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward          
of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with          
vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of        
fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad          
stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.                
   And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them        
at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The        
intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant           
struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the              
belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its               
cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only         
with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward         
is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation         
after generation, creeps upon them.                                         
   And, before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what           
ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only        
upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its         
inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were      
entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by          
European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles      
of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?          
   The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing          
subtlety- their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of         
ours- and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh           
perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have          
seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men          
like Schiaparelli watched the red planet- it is odd, by-the-bye,            
that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war- but failed      
to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped        
so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.           
   During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the              
illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by        
Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard        
of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to         
think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in         
the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired      
at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the            
site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.                      
   The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached            
opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange      
palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of             
incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight          
of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once               
resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving         
with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had          
become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a           
colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the           
planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."                             
   A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there        
was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily         
Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest            
dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of      
the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer,        
at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the              
excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that           
night in a scrutiny of the red planet.                                      
   In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that           
vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the                
shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the               
corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the           
little slit in the roof- an oblong profundity with the stardust             
streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking      
through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little         
round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing,          
so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes,      
and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was,        
so silvery warm- a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered,           
but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the        
clockwork that kept the planet in view.                                     
   As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to        
advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty        
millions of miles it was from us- more than forty millions of miles of      
void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of      
the material universe swims.                                                
   Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light,      
three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the         
unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness           
looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far              
profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small,         
flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible               
distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles,        
came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so         
much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed          
of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring           
missile.                                                                    
   That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the           
distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest        
projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and      
at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I        
was thirsty, and I went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my         
way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while      
Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.           
   That night another invisible missile started on its way to the           
earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the      
first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness,        
with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished         
I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute      
gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy           
watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and           
walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw         
and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.           
   He was full of speculation that night about the condition of             
Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who          
were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a      
heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in      
progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic             
evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.         
   "The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to           
one," he said.                                                              
   Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night             
after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten             
nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no         
one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the           
firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or          
dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey,         
fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's           
atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.                         
   Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and           
popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the           
volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made      
a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected,           
those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing         
now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of              
space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to          
me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate               
hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they            
did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new                  
photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in             
those days. People in these latter times scarcely realise the               
abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my           
own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and          
busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of        
moral ideas as civilisation progressed.                                     
   One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been               
10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was               
starlight, and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed      
out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which          
so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a        
party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing         
and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the            
houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the           
distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling,           
softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me      
the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging          
in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.             



                              CHAPTER 2                                     
                           THE FALLING STAR                                 

   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.                                          



                              CHAPTER 3                                     
                          ON HORSELL COMMON                                 

   I FOUND a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the          
huge hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the           
appearance of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. The turf and      
gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt        
its impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not        
there. I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the           
present, and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson's house.               
   There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the pit, with        
their feet dangling, and amusing themselves- until I stopped them-          
by throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about      
it, they began playing at "touch" in and out of the group of                
bystanders.                                                                 
   Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I              
employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and           
his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were          
accustomed to hang about the railway station. There was very little         
talking. Few of the common people in England had anything but the           
vaguest astronomical ideas in those days. Most of them were staring         
quietly at the big 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.                                                  



                              CHAPTER 4                                     
                          THE CYLINDER OPENS                                

   WHEN I RETURNED to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups      
were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons          
were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out        
black against the lemon yellow of the sky- a couple of hundred people,      
perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle                
appeared to be going on 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             
ascrewin' 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 sky. Now he got his        
shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until only           
his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have fancied a      
faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to go back           
and help him that my fears overruled.                                       
   Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the      
heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming          
along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the         
sight- a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more            
standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes,            
behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in           
short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of          
sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against      
the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles        
with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground.             



                              CHAPTER 5                                     
                             THE HEAT-RAY                                   

   AFTER THE GLIMPSE I had had of the Martians emerging from the            
cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind      
of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep          
in the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a                 
battleground of fear and curiosity.                                         
   I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a                  
passionate longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a        
big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at         
the sand heaps that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of      
thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the           
sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose        
up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with      
a wobbling motion. What could be going on there?                            
   Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups- one a          
little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the              
direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict.             
There were few near me. One man I approached- he was, I perceived, a        
neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name- and accosted. But        
it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.                         
   "What ugly 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, domelike 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.                



                              CHAPTER 6                                     
                   THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD                         

   IT IS STILL a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay         
men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are        
able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically                
absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a              
parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished        
parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic              
mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. But no one has             
absolutely proved these details. However it is done, it is certain          
that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible,      
instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into             
flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks           
and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that           
explodes into steam.                                                        
   That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the         
pit, charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long           
the common from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.        
   The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and           
Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the shops had closed when the      
tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so forth,         
attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the Horsell      
Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at last          
upon the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up after the      
labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would make any         
novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial             
flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the          
road in the gloaming....                                                    
   As yet, of course, few people in 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.                                                                   



                              CHAPTER 7                                     
                          HOW I REACHED HOME                                

   FOR MY OWN PART, I remember nothing of my flight except the              
stress of blundering against trees and stumbling through the                
heather. All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the                 
Martians; that pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro,           
flourishing overhead before it descended and smote me out of life. I        
came into the road between the crossroads and Horsell, and ran along        
this to the crossroads.                                                     
   At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the violence of      
my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the                
wayside. That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the             
gasworks. I fell and lay still.                                             
   I must have remained there some time.                                    
   I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not        
clearly understand how I came there. My terror had fallen from me like      
a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its           
fastener. A few minutes before, there had only been three real              
things before me- the immensity of the night and space and nature,          
my own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now          
it was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered           
abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to        
the other. I was immediately the self of every day again- a decent,         
ordinary citizen. The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the          
starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream. I asked myself        
had these latter things indeed happened? I could not credit it.             
   I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My      
mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their        
strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch,      
and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran      
a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to          
speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a                   
meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge.                             
   Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit      
smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying south-        
clatter, clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group          
of people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little      
row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real and      
so familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such            
things, I told myself, could not be.                                        
   Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my        
experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of         
detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it           
all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of           
time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This           
feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to        
my dream.                                                                   
   But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and           
the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise        
of business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight.      
I stopped at the group of people.                                           
   "What news from the common?" said I.                                     
   There were two men and a woman at the gate.                              
   "Eh?" said one of the men, turning.                                      
   "What news from the common?" I said.                                     
   " 'Ain't yer just been there?" asked the men.                            
   "People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman over           
the gate. "What's it all abart?"                                            
   "Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the creatures         
from Mars?"                                                                 
   "Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks"; and all          
three of them laughed.                                                      
   I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them        
what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences.                 
   "You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home.                  
   I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into         
the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could          
collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The           
dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained         
neglected on the table while I told my story.                               
   "There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had aroused;          
"they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl. They may keep the      
pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of          
it.... But the horror of them!"                                             
   "Don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her          
hand on mine.                                                               
   "Poor Ogilvy!" I said. "To think he may be lying dead there!"            
   My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I           
saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.                       
   "They may come here," she said again and again.                          
   I pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her.                   
   "They can scarcely move," I said.                                        
   I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy           
had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing               
themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the                 
gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of          
gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian,        
therefore, would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his            
muscular strength would be the same. His own body would be a cope of        
lead to him. That, indeed, was the general opinion. Both The Times and      
the Daily Telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next morning,         
and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.       
   The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more              
oxygen or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does      
Mars. The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the         
Martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased              
weight of their bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked         
the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed         
was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.               
   But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my               
reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine           
and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of              
reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and             
secure.                                                                     
   "They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my wineglass.        
"They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror.            
Perhaps they expected to find no living things- certainly no                
intelligent living things.                                                  
   "A shell in the pit," said I, "if the worst comes to the worst,          
will kill them all."                                                        
   The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my                
perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table      
with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious         
face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth          
with its silver and glass table furniture- for in those days even           
philosophical writers had many little luxuries- the crimson-purple          
wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I         
sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness,         
and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.                   
   So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in        
his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless             
sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death                 
tomorrow, my dear."                                                         
   I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was          
to eat for very many strange and terrible days.                             



                              CHAPTER 8                                     
                             FRIDAY NIGHT                                   

   THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY thing to my mind, of all the strange and          
wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing        
of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first                
beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social           
order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses        
and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand        
pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless      
it were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or          
London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits            
were at all affected by the new-comers. Many people had heard of the        
cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it           
certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany           
would have done.                                                            
   In London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing the            
gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his           
evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and                 
receiving no reply- the man was killed- decided not to print a special      
edition.                                                                    
   Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people            
were inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and           
women to whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and         
supping; working men were gardening after the labours of the day,           
children were being put to bed, young people were wandering through         
the lanes love-making, students sat over their books.                       
   Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and             
dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger,        
or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of          
excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most          
part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on      
as it had done for countless years- as though no planet Mars existed        
in the sky. Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was         
the case.                                                                   
   In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and          
going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were              
alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most            
ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching on Smith's monopoly,           
was selling papers with the afternoon's news. The ringing impact of         
trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled         
with their shouts of "Men from Mars!" Excited men came into the             
station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more      
disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling                 
Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and      
saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the              
direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving           
across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath        
fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the common that           
any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas             
burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on        
the common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake      
till dawn.                                                                  
   A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but         
the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or        
two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness      
and crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for           
now and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight,        
swept the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such,      
that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred            
bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next          
day. A noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.            
   So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre,          
sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,        
was this 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.                        



                              CHAPTER 9                                     
                         THE FIGHTING BEGINS                                

   SATURDAY LIVES in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of        
lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating        
barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in          
sleeping, and I rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast and      
stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring but      
a lark.                                                                     
   The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot, and I      
went round to the side gate to ask the latest news. He told me that         
during the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and            
that guns were expected. Then- a familiar, reassuring note- I heard         
a train running towards Woking.                                             
   "They aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can possibly      
be avoided."                                                                
   I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then      
strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My           
neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or        
to destroy the Martians during the day.                                     
   "It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he said.           
"It would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might      
learn a thing or two."                                                      
   He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for      
his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. At the same time      
he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet Golf          
Links.                                                                      
   "They say," said he, "that there's another of those blessed              
things fallen there- number two. But one's enough, surely. This lot'll      
cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled."      
He laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this.         
The woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of           
smoke to me. "They will be hot under foot for days, on account of           
the thick soil of pine needles and turf," he said, and then grew            
serious over "poor Ogilvy."                                                 
   After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards      
the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers-           
sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets                
unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots         
coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal,         
and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the            
Cardigan men standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for      
a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous             
evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the           
vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. They said      
that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the troops;      
their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The           
ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common             
soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible         
fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and            
they began to argue among themselves.                                       
   "Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one.                    
   "Get aht!" said another. "What's cover against this 'ere 'eat?           
Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the               
ground'll let us, and then drive a trench."                                 
   "Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha' been      
born a rabbit, Snippy."                                                     
   "'Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly- a             
little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.                            
   I repeated my description.                                               
   "Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about               
fishers of men- fighters of fish it is this time!"                          
   "It ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first            
speaker.                                                                    
   "Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said        
the little dark man. "You carn tell what they might do."                    
   "Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't no           
time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once."                   
   So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to the      
railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.                   
   But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long          
morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a         
glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were      
in the hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed          
didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy.         
I found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the        
military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the                 
tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The             
soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and        
leave their houses.                                                         
   I got back to lunch about two, very tired, for, as I have said, the      
day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I            
took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to        
the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers         
had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of          
Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I            
didn't know. The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They          
seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an         
almost continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently they were busy getting      
ready for a struggle. "Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but         
without success," was the stereotyped formula of the papers. A              
sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long        
pole. The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should        
of the lowing of a cow.                                                     
   I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this                  
preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became belligerent,         
and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my         
schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back. It hardly seemed a        
fair fight to me at that time. They seemed very helpless in that pit        
of theirs.                                                                  
   About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured            
intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned that the                   
smouldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was         
being shelled, in the hope of destroying that object before it opened.      
It was only about five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham           
for use against the first body of Martians.                                 
   About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the            
summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon      
us, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately           
after a gust of firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent,          
rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and,              
starting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the           
Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the           
little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the           
mosque had vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as      
if a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it. One of our chimneys          
cracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came               
clattering down the tiles and made a heap of broken red fragments upon      
the flower bed by my study window.                                          
   I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realised that the crest of            
Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians' Heat-Ray now that        
the college was cleared out of the way.                                     
   At that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out        
into the road. Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would          
go upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for.                      
   "We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the firing         
reopened for a moment upon the common.                                      
   "But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror.                        
   I thought, perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead.      
   "Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise.                         
   She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of          
their houses, astonished.                                                   
   "How are we to get to Leatherhead?" she said.                            
   Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway             
bridge; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College;      
two others dismounted, and began running from house to house. The sun,      
shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees,         
seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.      
   "Stop here," said I; "you are safe here"; and I started off at once      
for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart.      
I ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the      
hill would be moving. I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what         
was going on behind his house. A man stood with his back to me,             
talking to him.                                                             
   "I must have a pound," said the landlord, "and I've no one to drive      
it."                                                                        
   "I'll give you two," said I, over the stranger's shoulder.               
   "What for?"                                                              
   "And I'll bring it back by midnight," I said.                            
   "Lord!" said the landlord; "what's the hurry? I'm selling my bit of      
a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What's going on now?"             
   I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the      
dog cart. At the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that           
the landlord should leave his. I took care to have the cart there           
and then, drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of          
my wife and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few                  
valuables, such plate as we had, and so forth. The beech trees below        
the house were burning while I did this, and the palings up the road        
glowed red. While I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted         
hussars came running up. He was going from house to house, warning          
people to leave. He was going on as I came out of my front door,            
lugging my treasures, done up in a tablecloth. I shouted after him:         
   "What news?"                                                             
   He turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out in a             
thing like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate of the house at the        
crest. A sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him        
for a moment. I ran to my neighbour's door and rapped to satisfy            
myself what I already knew, that his wife had gone to London with           
him and had locked up their house. I went in again, according to my         
promise, to get my servant's box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her      
on the tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up        
into the driver's seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear      
of the smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of             
Maybury Hill towards Old Woking.                                            
   In front was a quiet, sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on            
either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I      
saw the doctor's cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I              
turned my head to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick                 
streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up      
into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green                
treetops eastward. The smoke already extended far away to the east and      
west- to the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west.        
The road was dotted with people running towards us. And very faint          
now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr      
of a machine-gun that was presently stilled, and an intermittent            
cracking of rifles. Apparently the Martians were setting fire to            
everything within range of their Heat-Ray.                                  
   I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my              
attention to the horse. When I looked back again the second hill had        
hidden the black smoke. I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave         
him a loose rein until Woking and Send lay between us and that              
quivering tumult. I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking           
and Send.                                                                   



                              CHAPTER 10                                    
                             IN THE STORM                                   

   LEATHERHEAD is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of        
hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the         
hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses.      
The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down             
Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening            
very peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure         
about nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took           
supper with my cousins and commended my wife to their care.                 
   My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed            
oppressed with 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                      
thunder-claps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange      
crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic        
electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The              
flickering light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote          
gustily at my face as I drove down the slope.                               
   At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then              
abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving             
rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it         
for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it      
to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision- a moment of      
bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red           
masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops          
of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and         
sharp and bright.                                                           
   And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod,         
higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and            
smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering           
metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel           
dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling         
with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly,             
heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and                
reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred      
yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled             
violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant           
flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body        
of machinery on a tripod stand.                                             
   Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted,        
as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were      
snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared,         
rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard        
to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went                
altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head         
hard round to the right, and in another moment the dog cart had heeled      
over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung            
sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.                     
   I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in         
the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his            
neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the        
black bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the             
wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal                 
mechanism went striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.           
   Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere        
insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing        
metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of             
which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its            
strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the         
brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable         
suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge         
mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of        
green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster        
swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.                                 
   So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the                
lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.                  
   As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned           
the thunder- "Aloo! Aloo!"- and in another minute it was with its           
companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I        
have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten              
cylinders they had fired at us from Mars.                                   
   For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching,          
by the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving           
about in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now              
beginning, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then        
flashed into clearness again. Now and then came a gap in the                
lightning, and the night swallowed them up.                                 
   I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some         
time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to      
a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.                     
   Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood,          
surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled to my feet at           
last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a      
run for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the              
people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I           
desisted, and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of           
the way, succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous               
machines, into the pine woods towards Maybury.                              
   Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards          
my own house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It      
was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming        
infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in      
columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage.                              
   If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen         
I should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to            
Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead.           
But that night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical          
wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin,      
deafened and blinded by the storm.                                          
   I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as          
much motive as I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a ditch      
and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out into         
the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for           
the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy              
torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me          
reeling back.                                                               
   He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I         
could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the         
stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task          
to win my way up the hill. I went close up to the fence on the left         
and worked my way along its palings.                                        
   Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of          
lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair        
of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the           
flicker of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next          
flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not        
shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay              
crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung                 
violently against it.                                                       
   Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before            
touched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his          
heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The          
lightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I          
sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose            
conveyance I had taken.                                                     
   I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my         
way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house.        
Nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there           
still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating          
up against the drenching hail. So far as I could see by the flashes,        
the houses about me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a            
dark heap lay in the road.                                                  
   Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the           
sound of feet, but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them.         
I let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the             
door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down. My              
imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the        
dead body smashed against the fence.                                        
   I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall,        
shivering violently.                                                        



                              CHAPTER 11                                    
                            AT THE WINDOW                                   

   I HAVE ALREADY said that my storms of emotion have a trick of            
exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that I was cold and        
wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I         
got up almost mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some        
whiskey, and then I was moved to change my clothes.                         
   After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so      
I do not know. The window of my study looks over the trees and the          
railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this          
window had been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with      
the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed          
impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway.                          
   The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and      
the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid         
red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across the           
light, huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to and        
fro.                                                                        
   It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on        
fire- a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and        
writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red              
reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of          
smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid        
the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the           
clear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied        
upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of        
it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang      
of burning was in the air.                                                  
   I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I         
did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to           
the houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and        
blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the           
hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along        
the Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing              
ruins. The light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a         
black heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow      
oblongs. Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part           
smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails.             
   Between these three main centres of light- the houses, the train,        
and the burning country 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 dear, 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 Maxims 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, be 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 green-house there,        
white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the history of           
warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal. And        
shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic           
giants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were        
surveying the desolation they had made.                                     
   It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and             
again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards         
the brightening dawn- streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.            
   Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They became               
pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day.                       



                              CHAPTER 12                                    
      WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON             

   As THE DAWN grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we      
had watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs.                 
   The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay      
in. He proposed, he said, to make his way Londonward, and thence            
rejoin his battery- No. 12, of the Horse Artillery. My plan was to          
return at once to Leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of           
the Martians impressed me that I had determined to take my wife to          
Newhaven, and go with her out of the country forthwith. For I               
already perceived clearly that the country about London must                
inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures      
as these could be destroyed.                                                
   Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with        
its guarding giants. Had I been alone, I think I should have taken          
my chance and struck across country. But the artilleryman dissuaded         
me: "It's no kindness to the right sort of wife," he said, "to make         
her a widow"; and in the end I agreed to go with him, under cover of        
the woods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him.      
Thence I would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead.             
   I should have started at once, but my companion had been in              
active service and he knew better than that. He made me ransack the         
house for a flask, which he filled with whiskey; and we lined every         
available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. Then          
we crept out of the house, and ran as quickly as we could down the          
ill-made road by which I had come overnight. The houses seemed              
deserted. In the road lay a group of three charred bodies close             
together, struck dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were              
things that people had dropped- a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon,         
and the like poor valuables. At the corner turning up towards the post      
office a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture, and                  
horseless, heeled over on a broken wheel. A cash box had been               
hastily smashed open and thrown under the debris.                           
   Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of      
the houses had suffered very greatly here. The Heat-Ray had shaved the      
chimney tops and passed. Yet, save ourselves, there did not seem to be      
a living soul on Maybury Hill. The majority of the inhabitants had          
escaped, I suppose, by way of the Old Woking road- the road I had           
taken when I drove to Leatherhead- or they had hidden.                      
   We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden           
now from the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of        
the hill. We pushed through these towards the railway without               
meeting a soul. The woods across the line were but the scarred and          
blackened ruins of woods; for the most part the trees had fallen,           
but a certain proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark          
brown foliage instead of green.                                             
   On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees;      
it had failed to secure its footing. In one place the woodmen had been      
at work on Saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a            
clearing, with heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its               
engine. Hard by was a temporary hut, deserted. There was not a              
breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still.            
Even the birds were hushed, and as we hurried along I and the               
artilleryman talked in whispers and looked now and again over our           
shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen.                              
   After a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the        
clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers      
riding slowly towards Woking. We hailed them, and they halted while we      
hurried towards them. It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates          
of the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the               
artilleryman told me was a heliograph.                                      
   "You are the first men I've seen coming this way this morning,"          
said the lieutenant. "What's brewing?"                                      
   His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared curiously.      
The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and saluted.            
   "Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying to              
rejoin battery, sir. You'll come in sight of the Martians, I expect,        
about half a mile along this road."                                         
   "What the dickens are they like?" asked the lieutenant.                  
   "Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body         
like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir."                   
   "Get out!" said the lieutenant. "What confounded nonsense!"              
   "You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire        
and strikes you dead."                                                      
   "What d'ye mean- a gun?"                                                 
   "No, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the             
Heat-Ray. Halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked        
up at me. I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road.         
   "It's perfectly true," I said.                                           
   "Well," said the lieutenant, "I suppose it's my business to see          
it too. Look here"- to the artilleryman- "we're detailed here clearing      
people out of their houses. You'd better go along and report                
yourself to Brigadier-General Marvin, and tell him all you know.            
He's at Weybridge. Know the way?"                                           
   "I do," I said; and he turned his horse southward again.                 
   "Half a mile, you say?" said he.                                         
   "At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward.          
He thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more.                         
   Farther along we came upon a group of three women and two                
children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage. They had      
got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with                 
unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture. They were all too             
assiduously engaged to talk to us as we passed.                             
   By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the         
country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight. We were far           
beyond the range of the Heat-Ray there, and had it not been for the         
silent desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of            
packing in others, and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge          
over the railway and staring down the line towards Woking, the day          
would have seemed very like any other Sunday.                               
   Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the            
road to Addlestone, and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw,        
across a stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-pounders standing neatly        
at equal distances pointing towards Woking. The gunners stood by the        
guns waiting, and the ammunition waggons were at a business-like            
distance. The men stood almost as if under inspection.                      
   "That's good!" said I. "They will get one fair shot, at any rate."       
   The artilleryman hesitated at the gate.                                  
   "I shall go on," he said.                                                
   Farther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a         
number of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart, and      
more guns behind.                                                           
   "It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," said the           
artilleryman. "They 'aven't seen that fire-beam yet."                       
   The officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over         
the treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now        
and again to stare in the same direction.                                   
   Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars,         
some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about.        
Three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles,      
and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the          
village street. There were scores of people, most of them sufficiently      
sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were            
having the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of        
their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge box and a      
score or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating      
with the corporal who would leave them behind. I stopped and gripped        
his arm.                                                                    
   "Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the pine            
tops that hid the Martians.                                                 
   "Eh?" said he, turning. "I was explainin' these is vallyble."            
   "Death!" I shouted. "Death is coming! Death!" and leaving him to         
digest that if he could, I hurried on after the 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 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 clangourous 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.                                                      



                              CHAPTER 13                                    
                    HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE                           

   AFTER GETTING this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial             
weapons, the Martians retreated to their original position upon             
Horsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris          
of their smashed companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray      
and negligible victim as myself. Had they left their comrade and            
pushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and        
London but batteries of twelve-pounder guns, and they would                 
certainly have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of             
their approach; as sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent           
would have been as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago.      
   But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its             
interplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours brought them                 
reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now        
fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked            
with furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position            
until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on        
the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant           
black muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area- perhaps           
twenty square miles altogether- that encircled the Martian                  
encampment on Horsell Common, through charred and ruined villages           
among the green trees, through the blackened and smoking arcades            
that had been but a day ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted              
scouts with the heliographs that were presently to warn the gunners of      
the Martian approach. But the Martians now understood our command of        
artillery and the danger of human proximity, and not a man ventured         
within a mile of either cylinder, save at the price of his life.            
   It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the            
afternoon in going to and fro, transferring everything from the second      
and third cylinders- the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third      
at Pyrford- to their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that,             
above the blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far         
and wide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast        
fighting-machines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work        
there far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green smoke      
that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and          
even, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom Downs.                            
   And while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next      
sally, and in front of me Humanity gathered for the battle, I made          
my way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of            
burning Weybridge towards London.                                           
   I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting                 
downstream; 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 be broke out again like one demented.                 
   "The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!" he shouted.       
   His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of        
Weybridge.                                                                  
   By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous         
tragedy in which he had been involved- it was evident he was a              
fugitive from Weybridge- had driven him to the very verge of his            
reason.                                                                     
   "Are we far from Sunbury?" I said, in a matter-of-fact tone.             
   "What are we to do?" he asked. "Are these creatures everywhere? Has      
the earth been given over to them?"                                         
   "Are we far from Sunbury?"                                               
   "Only this morning I officiated at early celebration-"                   
   "Things have changed," I said, quietly. "You must keep your head.        
There is still hope."                                                       
   "Hope!"                                                                  
   "Yes. Plentiful hope- for all this destruction!"                         
   I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first,        
but as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to             
their former stare, and his regard wandered from me.                        
   "This must be the beginning of the end," he said, interrupting           
me. "The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall        
call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them-      
hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!"               
   I began to understand the position. I ceased my laboured reasoning,      
struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand on his           
shoulder.                                                                   
   "Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good          
is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what                   
earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men!        
Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance            
agent."                                                                     
   For a time he sat in blank silence.                                      
   "But how can we escape?" he asked, suddenly. "They are                   
invulnerable, they are pitiless."                                           
   "Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other," I answered. "And the          
mightier they are the more sane and wary should we be. One of them was      
killed yonder not three hours ago."                                         
   "Killed!" he said, staring about him. "How can God's ministers be        
killed?"                                                                    
   "I saw it happen." I proceeded to tell him. "We have chanced to          
come in for the thick of it," said I, "and that is all."                    
   "What is that flicker in the sky?" he asked abruptly.                    
   I told him it was the heliograph signalling- that it was the sign        
of human help and effort in the sky.                                        
   "We are in the midst of it," I said, "quiet as it is. That               
flicker in the sky tells of the gathering storm. Yonder, I take it,         
are the Martians, and Londonward, where those hills rise about              
Richmond and Kingston and the trees give cover, earthworks are being        
thrown up and guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be         
coming this way again."                                                     
   And even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a            
gesture.                                                                    
   "Listen!" he said.                                                       
   From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull                 
resonance of distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then everything        
was still. A cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us.            
High in the west the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke      
of Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot, still splendour of the             
sunset.                                                                     
   "We had better follow this path," I said, "northward."                   



                              CHAPTER 14                                    
                              IN LONDON                                     

   MY YOUNGER BROTHER was in London when the Martians fell at               
Woking. He was a medical student, working for an imminent examination,      
and he heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The             
morning papers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special        
articles on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a        
brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its            
brevity.                                                                    
   The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a           
number of people with a quick-firing gun, so the story ran. The             
telegram concluded with the words: "Formidable as they seem to be, the      
Martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and,      
indeed, seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due to the             
relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." On that last        
text their leader-writer expanded very comfortingly.                        
   Of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which      
my brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no      
signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers        
puffed scraps of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell         
beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of         
the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight. Then the St.      
James's Gazette, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare            
fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication. This was             
thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the           
line. Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night          
of my drive to Leatherhead and back.                                        
   My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the                 
description in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles            
from my house. He made up his mind to run down that night to me, in         
order, as he says, to see the Things before they were killed. He            
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 of two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston,           
containing people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the        
locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and         
white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.                 
   "There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts        
and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They come      
from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been            
guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have        
told them to get off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard      
guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder.        
What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't get out of their      
pit, can they?"                                                             
   My brother could not tell him.                                           
   Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to        
the clients of the underground railway, and that the Sunday                 
excursionists began to return from all over the South-Western               
"lung"- Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth- at             
unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague        
hearsay to tell of. Everyone connected with the terminus seemed             
ill-tempered.                                                               
   About five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely      
excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost        
invariably closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western          
stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and          
carriages crammed with soldiers. These were the guns that were brought      
up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an                
exchange of pleasantries: "You'll get eaten!" "We're the                    
beast-tamers!" and so forth. A little while after that a squad of           
police came into the station and began to clear the public off the          
platforms, and my brother went out into the street again.                   
   The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of               
Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the              
bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that          
came drifting down the stream in patches. The sun was just setting,         
and the Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of        
the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold,           
barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was      
talk of a floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he said          
he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the        
west.                                                                       
   In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who        
had just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and      
staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other      
down Wellington Street. "Fighting at Weybridge! Full description!           
Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!" He had to give                  
threepence for a copy of that paper.                                        
   Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the            
full power and terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not      
merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds      
swaying vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and        
smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand          
against them.                                                               
   They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a               
hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and            
able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly        
of field guns, had been planted in the country about Horsell Common,        
and especially between the Woking district and London. Five of the          
machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a             
happy chance, had been destroyed. In the other cases the shells had         
missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the               
Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of         
the 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.                                                                    



                              CHAPTER 15                                    
                     WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY                            

   IT WAS while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under         
the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was      
watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the             
Martians had resumed the offensive. So far as one can ascertain from        
the conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of          
them remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine        
that night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of      
green smoke.                                                                
   But three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing          
slowly and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford           
towards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant         
batteries against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in a      
body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest        
fellow. They communicated with one another by means of sirenlike            
howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another.              
   It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St.             
George's Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford. The Ripley              
gunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have            
been placed in such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual      
volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village,          
while the Martian, without using his Heat-Ray, walked serenely over         
their guns, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them,           
and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he          
destroyed.                                                                  
   The St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a              
better mettle. Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have        
been quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their      
guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about      
a thousand yards' range.                                                    
   The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a           
few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the         
guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a        
prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant,             
answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem          
that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The         
whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground,          
and, simultaneously, both his companions brought their Heat-Rays to         
bear on the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all             
about the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who        
were already running over the crest of the hill escaped.                    
   After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and        
halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they              
remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who      
had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown        
figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight,           
and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had      
finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees again.                 
   It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three               
sentinels were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick         
black tube. A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the         
seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a         
curved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and the village of        
Send, southwest of Ripley.                                                  
   A dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they      
began to move, and warned the waiting batteries about Ditton and            
Esher. At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly          
armed with tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against         
the western sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we             
hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward out        
of Halliford. They moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a           
milky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height.          
   At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began          
running; but I knew it was no good running from a Martian, and I            
turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the         
broad ditch by the side of the road. He looked back, saw what I was         
doing, and turned to join me.                                               
   The two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury, the        
remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away          
towards Staines.                                                            
   The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up          
their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute      
silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns.             
Never since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so      
still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had              
precisely the same effect- the Martians seemed in solitary                  
possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender         
moon, the stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare         
from St. George's Hill and the woods of Painshill.                          
   But facing that crescent everywhere- at Staines, Hounslow,               
Ditton, Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river,           
and across the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a            
cluster of trees or village houses gave sufficient cover- the guns          
were waiting. The signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through      
the night and vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries      
rose to a tense expectation. The Martians had but to advance into           
the line of fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men,        
those guns glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into      
a thunderous fury of battle.                                                
   No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those           
vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle-           
how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions      
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, I have heard the                 
carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And        
where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the             
surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank            
slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and        
it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that           
one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been               
strained. The vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung        
together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and        
driving reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined            
with the mist and moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the         
form of dust. Save that an unknown element giving a group of four           
lines in the blue of the spectrum is concerned, we are still                
entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance.                          
   Once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the             
black smoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its                 
precipitation, that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper        
stories of high houses and on great trees, there was a chance of            
escaping its poison altogether, as was proved even that night at            
Street Cobham and Ditton.                                                   
   The man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story          
of the strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from         
the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like              
ghosts out of its inky nothingness. For a day and a half he remained        
there, weary, starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue           
sky and against the prospect of the distant hills a velvet-black            
expanse, with red roofs, green trees, and, later, black-veiled              
shrubs and gates, barns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there        
into the sunlight.                                                          
   But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed        
to remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground. As a rule        
the Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it         
again by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it.               
   This they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the            
starlight from the window of a deserted house at Upper Halliford,           
whither we had returned. From there we could see the searchlights on        
Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the      
windows rattled, and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that         
had been put in position there. These continued intermittently for the      
space of a quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the invisible        
Martians at Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of the              
electric light vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow.            
   Then the fourth cylinder fell- a brilliant green meteor- as I            
learned afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the guns on the Richmond         
and Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far          
away in the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard        
before the black vapour could overwhelm the gunners.                        
   So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a            
wasps' nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the      
Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart,           
until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden.         
All night through their destructive tubes advanced. Never once,             
after the Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give      
the artillery the ghost of a chance against them. Wherever there was a      
possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of         
the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly             
displayed the Heat-Ray was brought to bear.                                 
   By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and      
the glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black        
smoke, blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as         
far as the eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly            
waded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that.               
   They were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they        
had but a limited supply of material for its production or because          
they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe      
the opposition they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly           
succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to          
their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them,        
so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats         
and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames            
refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive          
operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of         
mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and        
spasmodic.                                                                  
   One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries      
towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. Survivors there          
were none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert      
and watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the          
limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of civilian        
spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening             
stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and            
wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the            
Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees           
and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields.                       
   One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the          
swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing           
headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable           
darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon         
its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking,         
falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men        
choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of         
the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction- nothing but a      
silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.                         
   Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of          
Richmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a         
last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the               
necessity of flight.                                                        



                              CHAPTER 16                                    
                        THE EXODUS FROM LONDON                              

   SO YOU UNDERSTAND the roaring wave of fear that swept through the        
greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning- the stream of        
flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult             
round the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about        
the shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel         
northward and eastward. By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by      
midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing        
shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that         
swift liquefaction of the social body.                                      
   All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern          
people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and          
trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for                 
standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock. By three, people        
were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple        
of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were      
fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct        
the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of           
the people they were called out to protect.                                 
   And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers               
refused to return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the           
people in an ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and           
along the northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen        
at Barnes, and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along           
the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape          
over the bridges in its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over           
Ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill,         
alive, but unable to escape.                                                
   After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at        
Chalk Farm- the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods          
yard there ploughed through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men      
fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace-      
my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across through a        
hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost in the          
sack of a cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was              
punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off,         
notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep         
foot of Haverstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned          
horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.                            
   So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware        
Road, reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead      
of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway,           
curious, wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some             
horsemen, and two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of the wheel      
broke, and the machine became unridable. He left it by the roadside         
and trudged through the village. There were shops half opened in the        
main street of the place, and people crowded on the pavement and in         
the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this extraordinary          
procession of fugitives that was beginning. He succeeded in getting         
some food at an inn.                                                        
   For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do.           
The flying people increased in number. Many of them, like my                
brother, seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh         
news of the invaders from Mars.                                             
   At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested.        
Most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there        
were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and        
the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.                 
   It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford,             
where some friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to         
strike into a quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a         
stile, and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. He              
passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names he        
did not learn. He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards          
High Barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow              
travellers. He came upon them just in time to save them.                    
   He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a            
couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in      
which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the         
frightened pony's head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in         
white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure,             
slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her          
disengaged hand.                                                            
   My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and               
hurried towards the struggle. One of the men desisted and turned            
towards him, and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that      
a fight was unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him           
forthwith and sent him down against the wheel of the chaise.                
   It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him           
quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the      
slender lady's arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung           
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          
highroad, 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 hill 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 near by their stopping place,           
fleeing from unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction        
from which my brother had come.                                             



                              CHAPTER 17                                    
                         THE "THUNDER CHILD"                                

   HAD THE MARTIANS aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday         
have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread              
itself slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road            
through Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and             
along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of         
the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If        
one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the glazing blue      
above London every northward and eastward road running out of the           
tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled 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 ham-stringing                
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 merchant-men, 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 waterlogged ship. This           
was the ram Thunder Child. It was the only warship in sight, but far        
away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea- for that day          
there was a dead calm- lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next        
ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line,          
steam up and ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the         
course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to               
prevent it.                                                                 
   At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the               
assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never been      
out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself              
friendless in a foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman,      
to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very                
similar. She had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and         
depressed during the two days' journeyings. Her great idea was to           
return to Stanmore. Things had been always well and safe at                 
Stanmore. They would find George at Stanmore.                               
   It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to           
the beach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the           
attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a      
boat and drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. The           
steamer was going, these men said, to Ostend.                               
   It was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares        
at the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his          
charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the        
three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.          
   There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some          
of whom had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the        
captain lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up      
passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He         
would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of        
guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the          
ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A         
jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels.                                     
   Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from        
Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. At           
the same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of        
three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath            
clouds of black smoke. But my brother's attention speedily reverted to      
the distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke        
rising out of the distant grey haze.                                        
   The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big      
crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and          
hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance,      
advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At          
that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear      
and anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his        
terror. Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the      
steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or          
church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human      
stride.                                                                     
   It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more         
amazed than terrified, watching this Titan advancing deliberately           
towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the      
coast fell away. Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another,            
striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still               
farther off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang      
halfway up between sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as          
if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were           
crowded between Foulness and the Naze. In spite of the throbbing            
exertions of the engines of the little paddle-boat, and the pouring         
foam that her wheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying          
slowness from this ominous advance.                                         
   Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of             
shipping already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship             
passing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on,      
steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being           
let out, launches rushing hither and thither. He was so fascinated          
by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no          
eyes for anything seaward. And then a swift movement of the                 
steamboat (she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down)             
flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing. There was      
a shouting all about him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed      
to be answered faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon      
his hands.                                                                  
   He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards      
from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade          
of a plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in         
huge waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her            
paddles helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost        
to the waterline.                                                           
   A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes         
were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing              
landward. Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and      
from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with         
fire. It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming      
to the rescue of the threatened shipping.                                   
   Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the                 
bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the             
Martians again, and he saw the three of them now close together, and        
standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were almost           
entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective,            
they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose          
wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were        
regarding this new antagonist with astonishment. To their                   
intelligence, it may be, the giant was even such another as                 
themselves. The Thunder Child fired no gun, but simply drove full           
speed towards them. It was probably her not firing that enabled her to      
get so near the enemy as she did. They did not know what to make of         
her. One shell, and they would have sent her to the bottom forthwith        
with the Heat-Ray.                                                          
   She was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway      
between the steamboat and the Martians- a diminishing black bulk            
against the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast.                 
   Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a          
canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side         
and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an              
unfolding torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear.      
To the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in      
their eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians.        
   They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water        
as they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like         
generator of the Heat-Ray. He held it pointing obliquely downward, and      
a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch. It must have            
driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod        
through paper.                                                              
   A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the        
Martian reeled and staggered. In another moment he was cut down, and a      
great body of water and steam shot high in the air. The guns of the         
Thunder Child sounded through the reek, going off one after the other,      
and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer,                  
ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed         
a smack to matchwood.                                                       
   But no one heeded that very much. At the sight of the Martian's          
collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all           
the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together. And        
then they yelled again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult,           
drove something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle        
parts, its ventilators and funnels spouting fire.                           
   She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and         
her engines working. She headed straight for a second Martian, and was      
within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear. Then          
with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels,              
leaped upward. The Martian staggered with the violence of her               
explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving        
forward with the impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled           
him up like a thing of cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily.         
A boiling tumult of steam hid everything again.                             
   "Two!" yelled the captain.                                               
   Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer from end to end rang            
with frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all        
in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to        
sea.                                                                        
   The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third         
Martian and the coast altogether. And all this time the boat was            
paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last      
the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened,        
and nothing of the Thunder Child could be made out, nor could the           
third Martian be seen. But the ironclads to seaward were now quite          
close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat.                     
   The little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the             
ironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still          
by a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and        
combining in the strangest way. The fleet of refugees was scattering        
to the northeast; several smacks were sailing between the ironclads         
and the steamboat. After a time, and before they reached the sinking        
cloud bank, the warships turned northward, and then abruptly went           
about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward. The         
coast grew faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks          
of clouds that were gathering about the sinking sun.                        
   Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the              
vibration of guns, and a form of black shadows moving. Everyone             
struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding           
furnace of the west, but nothing was to be distinguished clearly. A         
mass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun. The             
steamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense.             
   The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the         
evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the             
captain cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something      
rushed up into the sky out of the greyness- rushed slantingly upward        
and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the        
western sky; something flat and broad, and very large, that swept           
round in a vast curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again        
into the grey mystery of the night. And as it flew it rained down           
darkness upon the land.                                                     




                               BOOK TWO                                     
                     THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS                           

                              CHAPTER 1                                     
                              UNDER FOOT                                    

   IN THE FIRST BOOK I have wandered so much from my own adventures to      
tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two         
chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at           
Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will           
resume. We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day- the         
day of the panic- in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black      
Smoke from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait in           
aching inactivity during those two weary days.                              
   My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at            
Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead            
man. I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut      
off from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin      
I knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort          
of man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed         
now was not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to         
believe that the Martians were moving Londonward and away from her.         
Such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew            
very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I        
tired of the sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual           
remonstrance I kept away from him, staying in a room- evidently a           
children's schoolroom- containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When        
he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house        
and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.        
   We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and         
the morning of the next. There were signs of people in the next             
house on Sunday evening- a face at a window and moving lights, and          
later the slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were,      
nor what became of them. We saw nothing of them next day. The Black         
Smoke drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping         
nearer and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the      
house that hid us.                                                          
   A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff          
with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed      
all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate's hand as he fled        
out of the front room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms        
and looked out again, the country northward was as though a black           
snowstorm had passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were            
astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black          
of the scorched meadows.                                                    
   For a time we did not see how this change affected our position,         
save that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But later I      
perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get           
away. So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, My             
dream of action returned. But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable.       
   "We are safe here," he repeated; "safe here."                            
   I resolved to leave him- would that I had! Wiser now for the             
artilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and drink. I had found           
oil and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt        
that I found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I        
meant to go alone- had reconciled myself to going alone- he suddenly        
roused himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the                  
afternoon, we started about five o'clock, as I should judge, along the      
blackened road to Sunbury.                                                  
   In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying      
in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and         
luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery          
powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.      
We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of             
strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were      
relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating          
drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro          
under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance        
towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first         
people we saw.                                                              
   Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were             
still afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black           
Smoke, and there were more people about here, though none could give        
us news. For the most part they were like ourselves, taking                 
advantage of a lull to shift their quarters. I have an impression that      
many of the houses here were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too      
frightened even for flight. Here, too, the evidence of a hasty rout         
was abundant along the road. I remember most vividly three smashed          
bicycles in a heap, pounded into the road by the wheels of                  
subsequent carts. We crossed Richmond Bridge about half past eight. We      
hurried across the exposed bridge, of course, but I noticed floating        
down the stream a number of red masses, some many feet across. I did        
not know what these were- there was no time for scrutiny- and I put         
a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. Here             
again on the Surrey side were black dust that had once been smoke, and      
dead bodies- a heap near the approach to the station; but we had no         
glimpse of the Martians until we were some way towards Barnes.              
   We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running         
down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed               
deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the        
town of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke.                     
   Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people             
running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in         
sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood        
aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must               
immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go        
on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate        
crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again.                     
   But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest,         
and in the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a                  
shrubbery, and along a passage beside a big house standing in its           
own grounds, and so emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I         
left in the shed, but he came hurrying after me.                            
   That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it        
was manifest the Martians were about us. No sooner had the curate           
overtaken me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen            
before or another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew      
Lodge. Four or five little black figures hurried before it across           
the green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this            
Martian pursued them. In three strides he was among them, and they ran      
radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to           
destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed them      
into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as         
a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder.                                 
   It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any        
other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We stood for         
a moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into      
a walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch,           
and lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the             
stars were out.                                                             
   I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage        
to start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking             
along hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through        
the darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who      
seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched        
and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered        
dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but          
with their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty          
feet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun            
carriages.                                                                  
   Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent      
and deserted. Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too         
dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my            
companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we               
decided to try one of the houses.                                           
   The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the           
window, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable        
left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water to      
drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our next        
housebreaking.                                                              
   We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake.        
Here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the           
pantry of this domicile we found a store of food- two loaves of             
bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give            
this catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were                
destined to subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled         
beer stood under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and      
some limp lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen,      
and in this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found      
nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of        
biscuits.                                                                   
   We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark- for we dared not strike      
a light- and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle.      
The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly             
enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength        
by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us.                  
   "It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding             
glare of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out,           
clearly visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then            
followed such a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So        
close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind      
me, a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all             
about us, and the plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing        
into a multitude of fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong        
across the floor against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible      
for a long time, the curate told me, and when I came to we were in          
darkness again, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with        
blood from a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me.                       
   For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then              
things came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.            
   "Are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper.                         
   At last I answered him. I sat up.                                        
   "Don't move," he said. "The floor is covered with smashed                
crockery from the dresser. You can't possibly move without making a         
noise, and I fancy they are outside."                                       
   We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other      
breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near us,      
some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.          
Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.                 
   "That!" said the curate, when presently it happened again.               
   "Yes," I said. "But what is it?"                                         
   "A Martian!" said the curate.                                            
   I listened again.                                                        
   "It was not like the Heat-Ray," I said, and for a time I was             
inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled           
against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of           
Shepperton Church.                                                          
   Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or      
four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light      
filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through      
a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in         
the wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly           
for the first time.                                                         
   The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which            
flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our      
feet. Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the           
top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The             
floor was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen            
towards the house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in          
there, it was evident the greater part of the house had collapsed.          
Contrasting vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in         
the fashion, pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels        
below it, the wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple        
of coloured supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen         
range.                                                                      
   As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the         
body of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still             
glowing cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly          
as possible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of         
the scullery.                                                               
   Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.                   
   "The fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars, has        
struck this house and buried us under the ruins!"                           
   For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:                 
   "God have mercy upon us!"                                                
   I heard him presently whimpering to himself.                             
   Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my         
part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint          
light of the kitchen door. I could just see the curate's face, a            
dim, oval shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside there began a            
metallic hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a         
quiet interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises,      
for the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and              
seemed if anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently         
a measured thudding and a vibration that made everything about us           
quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and              
continued. Once the light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen             
doorway became absolutely dark. For many hours we must have crouched        
there, silent and shivering, until our tired attention failed....           
   At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to           
believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that         
awakening. My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me          
to action. I told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way      
towards the pantry. He made no answer, but so soon as I began eating        
the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after        
me.                                                                         



                              CHAPTER 2                                     
                  WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE                         

   AFTER EATING we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have        
dozed again, for when presently I looked round I was alone. The             
thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered        
for the curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of        
the kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him across the          
room, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the            
Martians. His shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden from      
me.                                                                         
   I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine           
shed; and the place rocked with that beating thud. Through the              
aperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold        
and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I           
remained watching the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and            
stepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered           
the floor.                                                                  
   I touched the curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass      
of plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact. I         
gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we           
crouched motionless. Then I turned to see how much of our rampart           
remained. The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit            
open in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I        
was able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet        
suburban roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.              
   The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the          
house we had first visited. The building had vanished, completely           
smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder lay now        
far beneath the original foundations- deep in a hole, already vastly        
larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round        
it had splashed under that tremendous impact- "splashed" is the only        
word- and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent           
houses. It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a         
hammer. Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on        
the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the            
kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil           
and ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the        
cylinder. Over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great        
circular pit the Martians were engaged in making. The heavy beating         
sound was evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright             
green vapour drove up like a veil across our peephole.                      
   The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on         
the farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped             
shrubbery, one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its              
occupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I          
scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been             
convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary          
glittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation, and on account of        
the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across        
the heaped mould near it.                                                   
   The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was      
one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called                
handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an         
enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first,      
it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile             
legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and         
reaching and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were      
retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number        
of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently           
strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them,        
were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.      
   Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did        
not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The              
fighting-machines were co-ordinated and animated to an extraordinary        
pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen         
these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or      
the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon,      
scarcely realise that living quality.                                       
   I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first               
pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had          
evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and           
there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods,      
without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether              
misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these                
renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply to      
warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They          
were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is         
like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been much           
better without them.                                                        
   At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a            
machine, but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument,           
the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its               
movements seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral        
portion. But then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown,            
shiny, leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies            
beyond, and the true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon           
me. With that realisation my interest shifted to those other                
creatures, the real Martians. Already I had had a transient impression      
of these, and the first nausea no longer obscured my observation.           
Moreover, I was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of           
action.                                                                     
   They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible        
to conceive. They were huge round bodies- or, rather, heads- about          
four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This         
face had no nostrils- indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any      
sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes,         
and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this            
head or body- I scarcely know how to speak of it- was the single tight      
tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it          
must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the        
mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two      
bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather           
aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the hands.         
Even as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be           
endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with        
the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible.        
There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed            
upon them with some facility.                                               
   The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since         
shown, was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure         
was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile        
tentacles. Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth          
opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused        
by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only      
too evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin.                  
   And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may            
seem to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which        
makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They        
were heads- merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat,         
much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of             
other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself        
seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But,                 
squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I           
could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say,          
blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a             
human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the         
recipient canal....                                                         
   The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but          
at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our          
carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.                     
   The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are            
undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and         
energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies           
are half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning        
heterogeneous food into blood. The digestive processes and their            
reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our            
minds. Men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy          
livers, or sound gastric glands. But the Martians were lifted above         
all these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion.                         
   Their undeniable preference for men as their source of                   
nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the         
victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These           
creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen            
into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost      
like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature,                
standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and             
large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have            
been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was         
reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand        
upright upon our planet would have broken every bone in their bodies.       
   And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place      
certain further details which, although they were not all evident to        
us at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them        
to form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures.                     
   In three other points their physiology differed strangely from           
ours. Their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man         
sleeps. Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to                   
recuperate, that periodical extinction was unknown to them. They had        
little or no sense of fatigue, it would seem. On earth they could           
never have moved without effort, yet even to the last they kept in          
action. In twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as         
even on earth is perhaps the case with the ants.                            
   In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the          
Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the      
tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A young      
Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth            
during the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially          
budded off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals      
in the fresh-water polyp.                                                   
   In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of          
increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly           
the primitive method. Among the lower animals, up even to those             
first cousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two            
processes occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded      
its competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has           
apparently been the case.                                                   
   It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of              
quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did      
forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian            
condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or December,      
1893, in a long-defunct publication, the Pall Mall Budget, and I            
recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called Punch. He      
pointed out- writing in a foolish, facetious tone- that the perfection      
of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the               
perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair,        
external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of      
the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would           
lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming          
ages. The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. Only one other         
part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the           
hand, "teacher and agent of the brain." While the rest of the body          
dwindled, the hands would grow larger.                                      
   There is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians      
we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression      
of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is         
quite credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not           
unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the          
latter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last)        
at the expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain          
would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of        
the emotional substratum of the human being.                                
   The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures           
differed from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial        
particular. Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on        
earth, have either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary             
science eliminated them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers        
and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such        
morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life. And speaking of the      
differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may            
allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed.                     
   Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green        
for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate,           
the seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought        
with them gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that         
known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in             
competition with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a             
transitory growth, and few people have seen it growing. For a time,         
however, the red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance.          
It spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our         
imprisonment, and its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe          
to the edges of our triangular window. And afterwards I found it            
broadcast throughout the country, and especially wherever there was         
a stream of water.                                                          
   The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a          
single round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual      
range not very different from ours except that, according to                
Philips, blue and violet were as black to them. It is commonly              
supposed that they communicated by sounds and tentacular                    
gesticulations; this is asserted, for instance, in the able but             
hastily compiled pamphlet (written evidently by someone not an              
eye-witness of Martian actions) to which I have already alluded, and        
which, so far, has been the chief source of information concerning          
them. Now no surviving human being saw so much of the Martians in           
action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an accident, but the        
fact is so. And I assert that I watched them closely time after             
time, and that I have seen four, five, and (once) six of them               
sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations           
together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar hooting            
invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, I believe,      
in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of air preparatory          
to the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to at least an           
elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I am convinced-      
as firmly as I am convinced of anything- that the Martians                  
interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. And I            
have been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions.              
Before the Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may      
remember, I had written with some little vehemence against the              
telepathic theory.                                                          
   The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and         
decorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they        
evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are,         
but changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at        
all seriously. Yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other        
artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great             
superiority over man lay. We men, with our bicycles and road-skates,        
our Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are      
just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked        
out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing different            
bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes           
and take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. And of             
their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than           
the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human      
devices in mechanism is absent- the wheel is absent; among all the          
things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of             
their use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in                 
locomotion. And in this connection it is curious to remark that even        
on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred         
other expedients to its development. And not only did the Martians          
either not know of (which is incredible), or abstain from, the              
wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the          
fixed pivot, or relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions               
thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the              
machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over         
small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this         
matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their         
machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of        
the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn      
closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of              
electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions,         
which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was             
attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine      
which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the         
cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians          
lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual          
tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.         
   While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the                 
sunlight, and noting each strange detail of their form, the curate          
reminded me of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned        
to a scowling face, and silent, eloquent lips. He wanted the slit,          
which permitted only one of us to peep through; and so I had to forego      
watching them for a time while he enjoyed that privilege.                   
   When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put           
together several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the         
cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own;           
and down on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into          
view, emitting jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit,      
excavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner.         
This it was which had caused the regular beating noise, and the             
rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped        
and whistled as it worked. So far as I could see, the thing was             
without a directing Martian at all.                                         



                              CHAPTER 3                                     
                       THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT                             

   THE ARRIVAL of a second fighting-machine drove us from our               
peep-hole into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the      
Martian might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date          
we began to feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the         
dazzle of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank              
blackness, but at first the slightest suggestion of approach drove          
us into the scullery in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was        
the danger we incurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us        
irresistible. And I recall now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of      
the infinite danger in which we were between starvation and a still         
more terrible death, we could yet struggle bitterly for that                
horrible privilege of sight. We would race across the kitchen in a          
grotesque way between eagerness and the dread of making a noise, and        
strike each other, and thrust and kick, within a few inches of              
exposure.                                                                   
   The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and         
habits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only             
accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to         
hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity        
of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I            
made to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent        
up and intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as             
lacking in restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours              
together, and I verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child      
of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would         
sit in the darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his         
importunities. He ate more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed         
out that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the         
Martians had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time         
might presently come when we should need food. He ate and drank             
impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals. He slept little.              
   As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so      
intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed           
doing it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him      
to reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void          
of pride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning,         
who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.                 
   It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I        
set them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped        
the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash      
of rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what      
is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But      
those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to         
elemental things, will have a wider charity.                                
   And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers,        
snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the      
pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the        
unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to             
those first new experiences of mine. After a long time I ventured back      
to the peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by         
the occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines. These        
last had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an        
orderly manner about the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now      
completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the      
big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in           
its general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and      
from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin            
below.                                                                      
   The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of           
the handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine         
was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped            
receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door      
and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the        
machine. Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin         
along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me        
by the mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little thread      
of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air.                          
   As I looked, the handling-machine, with a faint and musical              
clinking, extended, telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a          
moment before a mere blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind      
the mound of clay. In another second it had lifted a bar of white           
aluminium into sight, untarnished as yet and shining dazzlingly, and        
deposited it in a growing stack of bars that stood at the side of           
the pit. Between sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have      
made more than a hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the           
mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped the side of the          
pit.                                                                        
   The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these            
contrivances and the inert, panting clumsiness of their masters was         
acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these              
latter were indeed the living of the two things.                            
   The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were            
brought to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with         
all my ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that        
we were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding            
down the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,         
gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture             
suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my            
curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and           
clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic          
behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint,      
but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came          
from the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme        
of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying          
to the eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not          
at all. The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of      
blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a                 
fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated,      
stood across the corner of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the      
machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I                
entertained at first only to dismiss.                                       
   I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying           
myself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a            
Martian. As the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of           
his integument and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard         
a yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the           
machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back. Then something-      
something struggling violently- was lifted high against the sky, a          
black, vague enigma against the starlight; and as this black object         
came down again, I saw by the green brightness that it was a man.           
For an instant he was clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy,               
middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been         
walking the world, a man of considerable consequence. I could see           
his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain.          
He vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence.           
And then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from        
the Martians.                                                               
   I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands          
over my ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been        
crouching silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed,      
cried out quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running             
after me.                                                                   
   That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our           
horror and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I            
felt an urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of      
escape; but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to                
consider our position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was        
quite incapable of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had        
robbed him of all vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he         
had already sunk to the level of an animal. But, as the saying goes, I      
gripped myself with both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could          
face the facts, that, terrible as our position was, there was as yet        
no justification for absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the          
possibility of the Martians making the pit nothing more than a              
temporary encampment. Or even if they kept it permanently, they             
might not consider it necessary to guard it, and a chance of escape         
might be afforded us. I also weighed very carefully the possibility of      
our digging a way out in a direction away from the pit, but the             
chances of our emerging within sight of some sentinel fighting-machine      
seemed at first too great. And I should have had to do all the digging      
myself. The curate would certainly have failed me.                          
   It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw        
the lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the        
Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall         
for the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the         
door, and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as           
possible; but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the        
loose earth collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost          
heart, and lay down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no        
spirit even to move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of      
escaping by excavation.                                                     
   It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me            
that at first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being           
brought about by their overthrow through any human effort. But on           
the fourth or fifth night I heard a sound like heavy guns.                  
   It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly.        
The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a         
fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a            
handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the         
pit immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them.        
Except for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and         
patches of white moonlight, the pit was in darkness, and, except for        
the clinking of the handling-machine, quite still. That night was a         
beautiful serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the        
sky to herself. I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it           
was that made me listen. Then I heard quite distinctly a booming            
exactly like the sound of great guns. Six distinct reports I                
counted, and after a long interval six again. And that was all.             



                              CHAPTER 4                                     
                       THE DEATH OF THE CURATE                              

   IT WAS ON the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the        
last time, and presently found myself alone. Instead of keeping             
close to me and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone        
back into the scullery. I was struck by a sudden thought. I went            
back quickly and quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard         
the curate drinking. I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught      
a bottle of burgundy.                                                       
   For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor        
and broke, and I desisted and rose. We stood panting and threatening        
each other. In the end I planted myself between him and the food,           
and told him of my determination to begin a discipline. I divided           
the food in the pantry into rations to last us ten days. I would not        
let him eat any more that day. In the afternoon he made a feeble            
effort to get at the food. I had been dozing, but in an instant I           
was awake. All day and all night we sat face to face, I weary but           
resolute, and he weeping and complaining of his immediate hunger. It        
was, I know, a night and a day, but to me it seemed- it seems now-          
an interminable length of time.                                             
   And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open                 
conflict. For two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling        
contests. There were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times          
when I cajoled and persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with        
the last bottle of burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from           
which I could get water. But neither force nor kindness availed; he         
was indeed beyond reason. He would neither desist from his attacks          
on the food nor from his noisy babbling to himself. The rudimentary         
precautions to keep our imprisonment endurable he would not observe.        
Slowly I began to realise the complete overthrow of his                     
intelligence, to perceive that my sole companion in this close and          
sickly darkness was a man insane.                                           
   From certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind           
wandered at times. I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I              
slept. It sounds paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the           
weakness and insanity of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept          
me a sane man.                                                              
   On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and      
nothing I could do would moderate his speech.                               
   "It is just, O God!" he would say, over and over again. "It is           
just. On me and mine be the punishment laid. We have sinned, we have        
fallen short. There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in           
the dust, and I held my peace. I preached acceptable folly- my God,         
what folly!- when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and         
called upon them to repent- repent!... Oppressors of the poor and           
needy...! The wine press of God!"                                           
   Then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I                
withheld from him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening.          
He began to raise his voice- I prayed him not to. He perceived a            
hold on me- he threatened he would shout and bring the Martians upon        
us. For a time that scared me; but any concession would have shortened      
our chance of escape beyond estimating. I defied him, although I            
felt no assurance that he might not do this thing. But that day, at         
any rate, he did not. He talked with his voice rising slowly,               
through the greater part of the eighth and ninth days- threats,             
entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane and always frothy           
repentance for his vacant sham of God's service, such as made me            
pity him. Then he slept awhile, and began again with renewed strength,      
so loudly that I must needs make him desist.                                
   "Be still!" I implored.                                                  
   He rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness            
near the copper.                                                            
   "I have been still too long," he said, in a tone that must have          
reached the pit, "and now I must bear my witness. Woe unto this             
unfaithful city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! To the inhabitants of the         
earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet-"                        
   "Shut up!" I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the           
Martians should hear us. "For God's sake-"                                  
   "Nay," shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing             
likewise and extending his arms. "Speak! The word of the Lord is            
upon me!"                                                                   
   In three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen.            
   "I must bear my witness! I go! It has already been too long              
delayed."                                                                   
   I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In      
a flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway      
across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch of              
humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He went      
headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled over           
him and stood panting. He lay still.                                        
   Suddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping          
plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. I            
looked up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming            
slowly across the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the           
debris; another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen              
beams. I stood petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of             
glass plate near the edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and      
the large dark eyes of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic         
snake of tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole.                     
   I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the      
scullery door. The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in         
the room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements,            
this way and that. For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful      
advance. Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the         
scullery. I trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright. I           
opened the door of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness         
staring at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening.         
Had the Martian seen me? What was it doing now?                             
   Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now           
and then it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements            
with a faint metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a              
split-ring. Then a heavy body- I knew too well what- was dragged            
across the floor of the kitchen towards the opening. Irresistibly           
attracted, I crept to the door and peeped into the kitchen. In the          
triangle of bright outer sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus        
of a handling-machine, scrutinizing the curate's head. I thought at         
once that it would infer my presence from the mark of the blow I had        
given him.                                                                  
   I crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to             
cover myself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible          
in the darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. Every now and         
then I paused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its                 
tentacles through the opening again.                                        
   Then the faint metallic jingle returned. I traced it slowly feeling      
over the kitchen. Presently I heard it nearer- in the scullery, as I        
judged. I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. I      
prayed copiously. It passed, scraping faintly across the cellar             
door. An age of almost intolerable suspense intervened; then I heard        
it fumbling at the latch! It had found the door! The Martians               
understood doors!                                                           
   It worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door         
opened.                                                                     
   In the darkness I could just see the thing- like an elephant's           
trunk more than anything else- waving towards me and touching and           
examining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black            
worm swaying its blind head to and fro.                                     
   Once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. I was on the verge of        
screaming; I bit my hand. For a time the tentacle was silent. I             
could have fancied it had been withdrawn. Presently, with an abrupt         
click, it gripped something- I thought it had me!- and seemed to go         
out of the cellar again. For a minute I was not sure. Apparently it         
had taken a lump of coal to examine.                                        
   I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which         
had become cramped, and then listened. I whispered passionate               
prayers for safety.                                                         
   Then I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me              
again. Slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and        
tapping the furniture.                                                      
   While I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar         
door and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry, and the                  
biscuit-tins rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy            
bump against the cellar door. Then silence that passed into an              
infinity of suspense.                                                       
   Had it gone?                                                             
   At last I decided that it had.                                           
   It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in        
the close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even        
to crawl out for the drink for which I craved. It was the eleventh day      
before I ventured so far from my security.                                  



                              CHAPTER 5                                     
                            THE STILLNESS                                   

   MY FIRST ACT before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door        
between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty;             
every scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all      
on the previous day. At that discovery I despaired for the first time.      
I took no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth          
day.                                                                        
   At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed         
sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of        
despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had become      
deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear from         
the pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to crawl        
noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.                    
   On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance      
of alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that      
stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and           
tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by      
the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping.       
   During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought            
much of the curate and of the manner of his death.                          
   On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and             
thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of             
escape. Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the             
death of the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake,         
I felt a keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light        
that came into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my              
disordered imagination it seemed the colour of blood.                       
   On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was                 
surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right           
across the hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place            
into a crimson-coloured obscurity.                                          
   It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious,                
familiar sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified      
it as the snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen,         
I saw a dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy               
fronds. This greatly surprised me. At the scent of me he barked             
shortly.                                                                    
   I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I         
should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it           
would be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the              
attention of the Martians.                                                  
   I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly         
withdrew his head and disappeared.                                          
   I listened- I was not deaf- but certainly the pit was still. I           
heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse              
croaking, but that was all.                                                 
   For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to          
move aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a         
faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and               
thither on the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds,      
but that was all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.       
   Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and              
fought over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there      
was not a living thing in the pit.                                          
   I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery         
had gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner,      
certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the              
skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in      
the sand.                                                                   
   Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the      
mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the        
north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen.           
The pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the            
rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My         
chance of escape had come. I began to tremble.                              
   I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate              
resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to        
the top of the mound in which I had been buried so long.                    
   I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was              
visible.                                                                    
   When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been      
a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses,                    
interspersed with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of           
smashed brickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude          
of red cactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial      
growth to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and            
brown, but further a network of red thread scaled the still living          
stems.                                                                      
   The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been          
burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed      
windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their        
roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows                  
struggling for its refuse. A number of other birds hopped about             
among the ruins. Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along         
a wall, but traces of men there were none.                                  
   The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement,                  
dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the         
red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying.      
And oh! the sweetness of the air!                                           



                              CHAPTER 6                                     
                       THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS                             

   FOR SOME TIME I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my            
safety. Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had thought      
with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had not           
realised what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated          
this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see           
Sheen in ruins- I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of         
another planet.                                                             
   For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of          
men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I         
felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly            
confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations      
of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew         
quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of         
dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an            
animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would          
be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and           
empire of man had passed away.                                              
   But so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my      
dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast. In the        
direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a             
patch of garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went            
knee-deep, and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. The density of         
the weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding. The wall was some six        
feet high, and when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift      
my feet to the crest. So I went along by the side of it, and came to a      
corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble         
into the garden I coveted. Here I found some young onions, a couple of      
gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I         
secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through         
scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew- it was like walking through          
an avenue of gigantic blood-drops- possessed with two ideas: to get         
more food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted,        
out of this accursed unearthly region of the pit.                           
   Some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which      
also I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow      
water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served      
only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a         
hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the      
tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary            
growth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of              
unparalleled fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured down into the          
water of the Wey and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water      
fronds speedily choked both those rivers.                                   
   At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a          
tangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured          
in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and             
Twickenham. As the water spread the weed followed them, until the           
ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red         
swamp, whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the              
Martians had caused was concealed.                                          
   In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had            
spread. A cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of          
certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of            
natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting         
power against bacterial diseases- they never succumb without a              
severe struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.         
The fronds became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. They           
broke off at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their      
early growth carried their last vestiges out to sea.                        
   My first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my         
thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed         
some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly,            
metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to        
wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the      
flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to          
Mortlake. I managed to make out the road by means of occasional             
ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out        
of this spate and made my way to the hill going up towards                  
Roehampton and came out on Putney Common.                                   
   Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the          
wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the                   
devastation of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon        
perfectly undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn         
and doors closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or      
as if their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less                 
abundant; the tall trees along the lane were free from the red              
creeper. I hunted for food among the trees, finding nothing, and I          
also raided a couple of silent houses, but they had already been            
broken into and ransacked. I rested for the remainder of the                
daylight in a shrubbery, being, in my enfeebled condition, too              
fatigued to push on.                                                        
   All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the                 
Martians. I encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both           
hurried circuitously away from the advances I made them. Near               
Roehampton I had seen two human skeletons- not bodies, but                  
skeletons, picked clean- and in the wood by me I found the crushed and      
scattered bones of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a              
sheep. But though I gnawed parts of these in my mouth, there was            
nothing to be got from them.                                                
   After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where         
I think the Heat-Ray must have been used for some reason. And in a          
garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes,             
sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked down upon         
Putney and the river. The aspect of the place in the dusk was               
singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and        
down the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the          
weed. And over all- silence. It filled me with indescribable terror to      
think how swiftly that desolating change had come.                          
   For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence,      
and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard by the top      
of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms                  
dislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body. As I        
proceeded I became more and more convinced that the extermination of        
mankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already                    
accomplished in this part of the world. The Martians, I thought, had        
gone on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere.             
Perhaps even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might          
be they had gone northward.                                                 



                              CHAPTER 7                                     
                        THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL                              

   I SPENT THAT NIGHT in the inn that stands at the top of Putney           
Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to          
Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking            
into that house- afterwards I found the front door was on the latch-        
nor how I ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of         
despair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom, I found a          
rat-gnawed crust and two tins of pineapple. The place had been already      
searched and emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits           
and sandwiches that had been overlooked. The latter I could not eat,        
they were too rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger, but         
filled my pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come          
beating that part of London for food in the night. Before I went to         
bed I had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to           
window, peering out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little.        
As I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively- a thing I do         
not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate.           
During all the intervening time my mental condition had been a              
hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid           
receptivity. But in the night my brain, reinforced, I suppose, by           
the food I had eaten, grew clear again, and I thought.                      
   Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of         
the curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate          
of my wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to         
recall; I saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely                
disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself         
then as I see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow,      
the creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that.         
I felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted      
me. In the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of         
God that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I             
stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I         
retraced every step of our conversation from the moment when I had          
found him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing          
to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We      
had been incapable of co-operation- grim chance had taken no heed of        
that. Had I foreseen, I should have left him at Halliford. But I did        
not foresee; and crime is to foresee and do. And I set this down as         
I have set all this story down, as it was. There were no witnesses-         
all these things I might have concealed. But I set it down, and the         
reader must form his judgment as he will.                                   
   And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate      
body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. For      
the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so,         
unhappily, I could for the latter. And suddenly that night became           
terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I          
found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and              
painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return            
from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish            
prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity;      
but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face      
with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so         
soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the         
house like a rat leaving its hiding place- a creature scarcely larger,      
an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters        
might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to         
God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us        
pity- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.                
   The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink,        
and was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs            
from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges      
of the panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday         
night after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart         
inscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden,            
with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat      
trampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a           
lot of blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. My            
movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of           
going to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest            
chance of finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken            
them suddenly, my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it            
seemed to me I might find or learn there whither the Surrey people had      
fled. I knew I wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and      
the world of men, but I had no clear idea how the finding might be          
done. I was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness. From           
the corner I went, under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to         
the edge of Wimbledon Common, stretching wide and far.                      
   That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom;          
there was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the      
verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and             
vitality. I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place        
among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from           
their stout resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with          
an odd feeling of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a        
clump of bushes. I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, and      
it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached him          
slowly. He stood silent and motionless, regarding me.                       
   As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and      
filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged          
through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of               
ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly            
patches. His black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark           
and dirty and sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him.             
There was a red cut across the lower part of his face.                      
   "Stop!" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I              
stopped. His voice was hoarse. "Where do you come from?" he said.           
   I thought, surveying him.                                                
   "I come from Mortlake," I said. "I was buried near the pit the           
Martians made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and            
escaped."                                                                   
   "There is no food about here," he said. "This is my country. All         
this hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge        
of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?"        
   I answered slowly.                                                       
   "I don't know," I said. "I have been buried in the ruins of a house      
thirteen or fourteen days. I don't know what has happened."                 
   He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed      
expression.                                                                 
   "I've no wish to stop about here," said I. "I think I shall go to        
Leatherhead, for my wife was there."                                        
   He shot out a pointing finger.                                           
   "It is you," said he; "the man from Woking. And you weren't              
killed at Weybridge?"                                                       
   I recognised him at the same moment.                                     
   "You are the artilleryman who came into my garden."                      
   "Good luck!" he said. "We are lucky ones! Fancy you!" He put out         
a hand, and I took it. "I crawled up a drain," he said. "But they           
didn't kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards            
Walton across the fields. But- It's not sixteen days altogether- and        
your hair is grey." He looked over his shoulder suddenly. "Only a           
rook," he said. "One gets to know that birds have shadows these             
days. This is a bit open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk."        
   "Have you seen any Martians?" I said. "Since I crawled out-"             
   "They've gone away across London," he said. "I guess they've got         
a bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the         
sky is alive with their lights. It's like a great city, and in the          
glare you can just see them moving. By daylight you can't. But nearer-      
I haven't seen them-" (he counted on his fingers) "five days. Then I        
saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the         
night before last"- he stopped and spoke impressively- "it was just         
a matter of lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe           
they've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly."                   
   I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.            
   "Fly!"                                                                   
   "Yes," he said, "fly."                                                   
   I went on into a little bower, and sat down.                             
   "It is all over with humanity," I said. "If they can do that they        
will simply go round the world."                                            
   He nodded.                                                               
   "They will. But- It will relieve things over here a bit. And             
besides-" He looked at me. "Aren't you satisfied it is up with              
humanity? I am. We're down; we're beat."                                    
   I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact- a      
fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a vague        
hope; rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated his          
words, "We're beat." They carried absolute conviction.                      
   "It's all over," he said. "They've lost one- just one. And               
they've made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the      
world. They've walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge           
was an accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming.          
These green stars- I've seen none these five or six days, but I've          
no doubt they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be             
done. We're under! We're beat!"                                             
   I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to         
devise some countervailing thought.                                         
   "This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any      
more than there's war between man and ants."                                
   Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.                        
   "After the tenth shot they fired no more- at least, until the first      
cylinder came."                                                             
   "How do you know?" said the artilleryman. I explained. He                
thought. "Something wrong with the gun," he said. "But what if there        
is? They'll get it right again. And even if there's a delay, how can        
it alter the end? It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds           
their cities, live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the           
men want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way.              
That's what we are now- just ants. Only-"                                   
   "Yes," I said.                                                           
   "We're eatable ants."                                                    
   We sat looking at each other.                                            
   "And what will they do with us?" I said.                                 
   "That's what I've been thinking," he said; "that's what I've been        
thinking. After Weybridge I went south- thinking. I saw what was up.        
Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting                   
themselves. But I'm not so fond of squealing. I've been in sight of         
death once or twice; I'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best         
and worst, death- it's just death. And it's the man that keeps on           
thinking comes through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I,         
'Food won't last this way,' and I turned right back. I went for the         
Martians like a sparrow goes for man. An round"- he waved a hand to         
the horizon- "they're starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each          
other...."                                                                  
   He saw my face, and halted awkwardly.                                    
   "No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France," he said. He      
seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on:          
"There's food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines,                
spirits, mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty.          
Well, I was telling you what I was thinking. 'Here's intelligent            
things,' I said, 'and it seems they want us for food. First, they'll        
smash us up- ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and               
organisation. All that will go. If we were the size of ants we might        
pull through. But we're not. It's all too bulky to stop. That's the         
first certainty.' Eh?"                                                      
   I assented.                                                              
   "It is; I've thought it out. Very well, then- next; at present           
we're caught as we're wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles          
to get a crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by                   
Wandsworth, picking houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage.        
But they won't keep on doing that. So soon as they've settled all           
our guns and ships, and smashed our railways, and done all the              
things they are doing over there, they will begin catching us               
systematic, picking the best and storing us in cages and things.            
That's what they will start doing in a bit. Lord! They haven't begun        
on us yet. Don't you see that?"                                             
   "Not begun!" I exclaimed.                                                
   "Not begun. All that's happened so far is through our not having         
the sense to keep quiet- worrying them with guns and such foolery. And      
losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't           
any more safety than where we were. They don't want to bother us            
yet. They're making their things- making all the things they                
couldn't bring with them, getting things ready for the rest of their        
people. Very likely that's why the cylinders have stopped for a bit,        
for fear of hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing          
about blind, on the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting      
them up, we've got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of        
affairs. That's how I figure it out. It isn't quite according to            
what a man wants for his species, but it's about what the facts             
point to. And that's the principle I acted upon. Cities, nations,           
civilisation, progress- it's all over. That game's up. We're beat."         
   "But if that is so, what is there to live for?"                          
   The artilleryman looked at me for a moment.                              
   "There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or         
so; there won't be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds      
at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is        
up. If you've got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas      
with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck 'em away. They         
ain't no further use."                                                      
   "You mean-"                                                              
   "I mean that men like me are going on living- for the sake of the        
breed. I tell you, I'm grim set on living. And if I'm not mistaken,         
you'll show what insides you've got, too, before long. We aren't going      
to be exterminated. And I don't mean to be caught either, and tamed         
and fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those brown          
creepers!"                                                                  
   "You don't mean to say-"                                                 
   "I do. I'm going on. Under their feet. I've got it planned; I've         
thought it out. We men are beat. We don't know enough. We've got to         
learn before we've got a chance. And we've got to live and keep             
independent while we learn. See! That's what has to be done."               
   I stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man's                
resolution.                                                                 
   "Great God!" cried I. "But you are a man indeed!" And suddenly I         
gripped his hand.                                                           
   "Eh!" he said, with his eyes shining. "I've thought it out, eh?"         
   "Go on," I said.                                                         
   "Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready.           
I'm getting ready. Mind you, it isn't all of us that are made for wild      
beasts; and that's what it's got to be. That's why I watched you. I         
had my doubts. You're slender. I didn't know that it was you, you see,      
or just how you'd been buried. All these- the sort of people that           
lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to        
live down that way- they'd be no good. They haven't any spirit in           
them- no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one          
or the other- Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just          
used to skedaddle off to work- I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of            
breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little           
season-ticket train, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't;          
working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to               
understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for          
dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and      
sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them,         
but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in           
their one little miserable skedaddle through the world. Lives               
insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundays- fear      
of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians      
will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food,          
careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing about the            
fields and lands on empty stomachs, they'll come and be caught              
cheerful. They'll be quite glad after a bit. They'll wonder what            
people did before there were Martians to take care of them. And the         
bar loafers, and mashers, and singers- I can imagine them. I can            
imagine them," he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. "There'll      
be any amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There's           
hundreds of things I saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see           
clearly these last few days. There's lots will take things as they          
are- fat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling          
that it's all wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now         
whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be           
doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of              
complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion,        
very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the      
Lord. Very likely you've seen the same thing. It's energy in a gale of      
funk, and turned clean inside out. These cages will be full of              
psalms and hymns and piety. And those of a less simple sort will            
work in a bit of- what is it? eroticism."                                   
   He paused.                                                               
   "Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train        
them to do tricks- who knows?- get sentimental over the pet boy who         
grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt      
us."                                                                        
   "No," I cried, "that's impossible! No human being-"                      
   "What's the good of going on with such lies?" said the                   
artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What nonsense to           
pretend there isn't!"                                                       
   And I succumbed to his conviction.                                       
   "If they come after me," he said; "Lord, if they come after me!"         
and subsided into a grim meditation.                                        
   I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring          
against the man's reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one         
would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his- I, a              
professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a          
common soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that I        
had scarcely realised.                                                      
   "What are you doing?" I said, presently. "What plans have you            
made?"                                                                      
   He hesitated.                                                            
   "Well, it's like this," he said. "What have we to do? We have to         
invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be                  
sufficiently secure to bring the children up. Yes- wait a bit, and          
I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done. The tame ones will      
go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big,               
beautiful, rich-blooded, stupid-rubbish! The risk is that we who            
keep wild will go savage- degenerate into a sort of big, savage             
rat.... You see, how I mean to live is underground. I've been thinking      
about the drains. Of course those who don't know drains think horrible      
things; but under this London are miles and miles- hundreds of              
miles- and a few days' rain and London empty will leave them sweet and      
clean. The main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then      
there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may be         
made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin      
to see? And we form a band- able-bodied, clean-minded men. We're not        
going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again."       
   "As you meant me to go?"                                                 
   "Well- I parleyed, didn't I?"                                            
   "We won't quarrel about that. Go on."                                    
   "Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we          
want also- mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies- no blasted        
rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and      
the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought          
to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty,         
after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be happy.             
Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it bad. And      
in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be London.           
And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the open          
when the Martians keep away. Play cricket, perhaps. That's how we           
shall save the race. Eh? It's a possible thing? But saving the race is      
nothing in itself. As I say, that's only being rats. It's saving our        
knowledge and adding to it is the thing. There men like you come in.        
There's books, there's models. We must make great safe places down          
deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry swipes,           
but ideas, science books. That's where men like you come in. We must        
go to the British Museum and pick all those books through.                  
Especially we must keep up our science- learn more. We must watch           
these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it's all working,         
perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we must         
leave the Martians alone. We mustn't even steal. If we get in their         
way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know. But      
they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they have        
all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin."                       
   The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.               
   "After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before- Just      
imagine this: Four or five of their fighting-machines suddenly              
starting off- Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em.           
Not a Martian in 'em, but men- men who have learned the way how. It         
may be in my time, even- those men. Fancy having one of them lovely         
things, with its Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control!        
What would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the        
run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open their            
beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see them                 
hurrying, hurrying- puffing and blowing and hooting to their other          
mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case. And swish,         
bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, swish comes         
the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own."                   
   For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the          
tone of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my           
mind. I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human               
destiny and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the        
reader who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his              
position, reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject,         
and mine, crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening,                  
distracted by apprehension. We talked in this manner through the early      
morning time, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning        
the sky for Martians, hurried, precipitately to the house on Putney         
Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal cellar of the              
place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon- it was a           
burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main      
drain on Putney Hill- I had my first inkling of the gulf between his        
dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a day. But I         
believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until        
past midday at his digging. We had a garden barrow and shot the             
earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed ourselves          
with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring               
pantry. I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the         
world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over        
in my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but         
I worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a         
purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the            
distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we        
had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should        
dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at         
once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed        
to me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a        
needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these        
things, the artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.                 
   "We're working well," he said. He put down his spade. "Let us knock      
off a bit," he said. "I think it's time we reconnoitred from the            
roof of the house."                                                         
   I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his         
spade; and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and          
so did he at once.                                                          
   "Why were you walking about the common," I said, "instead of             
being here?"                                                                
   "Taking the air," he said. "I was coming back. It's safer by             
night."                                                                     
   "But the work?"                                                          
   "Oh, one can't always work," he said, and in a flash I saw the           
man plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. "We ought to reconnoitre        
now," he said, "because if any come near they may hear the spades           
and drop upon us unawares."                                                 
   I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof         
and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were        
to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under        
shelter of the parapet.                                                     
   From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney,        
but we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the        
low parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the        
trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and          
dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was        
strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing          
water for their propagation. About us neither had gained a footing;         
laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arborvitae, rose out          
of laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight.           
Beyond Kensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid      
the northward hills.                                                        
   The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still        
remained in London.                                                         
   "One night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric             
light in order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze,      
crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing           
and shouting till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day         
came they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the           
Langham and looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been         
there. It must have given some of them a nasty turn. He came down           
the road towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or          
frightened to run away."                                                    
   Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!           
   From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his               
grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently        
of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than         
half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand      
something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing        
nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that      
he personally was to capture and fight the great machine.                   
   After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed            
disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was             
nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten      
he went away and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit these,         
and his optimism glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming as a           
great occasion.                                                             
   "There's some champagne in the cellar," he said.                         
   "We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy," said I.                
   "No," said he; "I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We've a           
heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength         
while we may. Look at these blistered hands!"                               
   And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing         
cards after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing           
London between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern,          
we played for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem        
to the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more                
remarkable, I found the card game and several others we played              
extremely interesting.                                                      
   Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of             
extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect              
before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following        
the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with         
vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at             
three tough chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk,        
and lit a lamp.                                                             
   After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the                
artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. He      
was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had                
encountered in the morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a less      
kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with my         
health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable              
intermittence. I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights      
of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the Highgate            
hills.                                                                      
   At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The          
northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington         
glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed        
up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was          
black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale,                   
violet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze.           
For a space I could not understand it, and then I knew that it must be      
the red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that         
realisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion          
of things, awoke again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear,         
glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the          
darkness of Hampstead and Highgate.                                         
   I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the              
grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the          
midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion      
of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain                
wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I        
seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse.      
I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things      
to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it              
seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians           
and my fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the roof when the late        
moon rose.                                                                  



                              CHAPTER 8                                     
                             DEAD LONDON                                    

   AFTER I HAD parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and      
by the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was            
tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its      
fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease            
that presently removed it so swiftly.                                       
   At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I           
found a man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust,          
alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing from      
him but curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should have         
stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face.                    
   There was a black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards,        
and it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I           
got food- sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable- in a baker's shop      
here. Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of             
powder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of        
the burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the          
streets were quiet again.                                                   
   Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon      
dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the            
Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly        
past them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their           
outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs.                            
   Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday          
in the City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the            
blinds drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places              
plunderers had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision         
and wine shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place,      
but apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold           
chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to      
touch them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep;        
the hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty         
brown dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across         
the pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead.                          
   The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the            
stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death- it was the        
stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction          
that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis,         
and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these            
houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and            
derelict....                                                                
   In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black          
powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling.        
It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing              
alternation of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on              
perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in            
volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off            
again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring      
towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing.      
It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its         
fear and solitude.                                                          
   "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note- great             
waves of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the         
tall buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling,               
towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into        
the Natural History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the         
towers, in order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to           
the ground, where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the          
Exhibition Road. All the large mansions on each side of the road            
were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the      
houses. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight- a      
bus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled         
over this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the               
Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see        
nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze      
of smoke to the northwest.                                                  
   "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, as it seemed          
to me, from the district about Regent's Park. The desolating cry            
worked upon my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The             
wailing took possession of me. I found I was intensely weary,               
footsore, and now again hungry and thirsty.                                 
   It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of      
the dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and in        
its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old             
friends that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in         
the chemists' shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I            
recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew,         
shared the city with myself....                                             
   I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were        
black powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the        
gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty          
after the heat of my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to          
break into a public-house and get food and drink. I was weary after         
eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black      
horsehair sofa I found there.                                               
   I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, "Ulla,             
ulla, ulla, ulla." It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some         
biscuits and a cheese in the bar- there was a meat safe, but it             
contained nothing but maggots- I wandered on through the silent             
residential squares to Baker Street- Portman Square is the only one         
I can name- and so came out at last upon Regent's Park. And as I            
emerged from the top of Baker Street, I saw far away over the trees in      
the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which        
this howling proceeded. I was not terrified. I came upon him as if          
it were a matter of course. I watched him for some time, but he did         
not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that I      
could discover.                                                             
   I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of           
"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to      
be very fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason of         
this monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the park        
and struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went along          
under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this                   
stationary, howling Martian from the direction of St. John's Wood. A        
couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping               
chorus, and saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in         
his jaws coming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving            
mongrels in pursuit of him. He made a wide curve to avoid me, as            
though he feared I might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping died      
away down the silent road, the wailing sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla,          
ulla," reasserted itself.                                                   
   I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John's Wood      
station. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. It was      
only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this          
mechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and            
twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart was shattered. It        
seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been      
overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might          
have happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of           
its Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the         
twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat         
was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had        
left, were invisible to me.                                                 
   Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards         
Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second         
Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards           
the Zoological Gardens, and silent. A little beyond the ruins about         
the smashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found      
the Regent's Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation.                   
   As I crossed the bridge, the sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,"          
ceased. It was, as it were, cut off. The silence came like a                
thunderclap.                                                                
   The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees        
towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed              
clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness.         
Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while        
that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable;        
by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life        
about me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of              
something- I knew not what- and then a stillness that could be felt.        
Nothing but this gaunt quiet.                                               
   London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white         
houses were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me my imagination         
found a thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a              
horror of my temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black          
as though it was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across           
the pathway. I could not bring myself to go on. I turned down St.           
John's Wood Road, and ran headlong from this unendurable stillness          
towards Kilburn. I hid from the night and the silence, until long           
after midnight, in a cabmen's shelter in Harrow Road. But before the        
dawn my courage returned, and while the stars were still in the sky         
I turned once more towards Regent's Park. I missed my way among the         
streets, and presently saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of         
the early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up      
to the fading stars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless like         
the others.                                                                 
   An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I would      
save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on                
recklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the           
light grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and          
clustering about the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I             
began running along the road.                                               
   I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund's Terrace          
(I waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down        
from the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the          
grass before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about      
the crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it- it was the final        
and largest place the Martians had made- and from behind these heaps        
there rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager      
dog ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind          
grew real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling            
exultation, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out        
of the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds            
pecked and tore.                                                            
   In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and             
stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me.         
A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within         
it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And                 
scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the      
now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent           
and laid in a row, were the Martians- dead!- slain by the putrefactive      
and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared;           
slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's               
devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom,         
has put upon this earth.                                                    
   For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have            
foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of      
disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things-          
taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by          
virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed              
resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and          
to many- those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance-        
our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria          
in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank           
and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already      
when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting         
even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a           
billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is        
his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten         
times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.       
   Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in          
that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have          
seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also        
at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that           
these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For      
a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been            
repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain          
them in the night.                                                          
   I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously,         
even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his           
rays. The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great           
and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their          
tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows         
towards the light. A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over           
the bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me.           
Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay           
the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon        
our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had         
come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up      
at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the      
tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned          
seats on the summit of Primrose Hill.                                       
   I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed        
now in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen                
overnight, just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even as      
it had been crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to            
die, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its           
machinery was exhausted. They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of      
shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun.                         
   All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting            
destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only      
seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine        
the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses.          
   Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the         
splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear          
sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs         
caught the light and glared with a white intensity.                         
   Northward were Kilburn and Hampstead, blue and crowded with houses;      
westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the               
Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park, the Langham Hotel, the          
dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant              
mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the              
sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far          
away and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal          
Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul's was dark      
against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a            
huge gaping cavity on its western side.                                     
   And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and         
churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous           
hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to          
build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction            
that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been         
rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this         
dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt         
a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears.                              
   The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The         
survivors of the people scattered over the country- leaderless,             
lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd- the thousands who         
had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing          
stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and            
pour across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the          
hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the                 
blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit         
grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of           
the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the         
thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In      
a year, thought I- in a year...                                             
   With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and      
the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.       



                              CHAPTER 9                                     
                              WRECKAGE                                     

   AND NOW COMES the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it          
is not altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly,      
all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and             
praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.           
   Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that,        
so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,         
several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the         
previous night. One man- the first- had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand,      
and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to telegraph      
to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a          
thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed         
into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,           
Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the      
pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and           
staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains,         
even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that        
had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all            
England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched      
along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting          
to gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for the food! Across the          
Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and        
meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world              
seemed going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no            
memory. I drifted- a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly      
people, who had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and           
raving through the streets of St. John's Wood. They have told me since      
that I was singing some insane doggerel about "The Last Man Left            
Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!" Troubled as they were with         
their own affairs, these people, whose name, much as I would like to        
express my gratitude to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless        
cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and protected me from            
myself. Apparently they had learned something of my story from me           
during the days of my lapse.                                                
   Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me        
what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was      
imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian.      
He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any                 
provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere                  
wantonness of power.                                                        
   I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely        
man and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four         
days after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing             
craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that      
seemed so happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire        
to feast upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to      
divert me from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the               
impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and         
parting, as I will confess, from these four-day friends with tears,         
I went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and          
strange and empty.                                                          
   Already they were busy with returning people; in places even             
there were shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water.         
   I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my      
melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the           
streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were abroad      
everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible      
that any great proportion of the population could have been slain. But      
then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how           
shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and            
that every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed all      
with one of two expressions- a leaping exultation and energy or a grim      
resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city      
of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread            
sent us by the French government. The ribs of the few horses showed         
dismally. Haggard special constables with white badges stood at the         
corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought by the        
Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red         
weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.                     
   At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts      
of that grotesque time- a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket        
of the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was        
the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication- the Daily         
Mail. I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket.        
Most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing      
had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement            
stereo on the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the news      
organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing           
fresh except that already in one week the examination of the Martian        
mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the         
article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the             
"Secret of Flying" was discovered. At Waterloo I found the free trains      
that were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already          
over. There were few people in the train, and I was in no mood for          
casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with            
folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past      
the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over            
temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were          
blackened ruins. To Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with      
powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and        
rain, and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again; there        
were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side        
with the customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying.       
   All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt         
and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue      
of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along        
the line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass      
of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled cabbage.      
The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the        
red climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain         
nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth            
cylinder. A number of people were standing about it, and some               
sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack,        
flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were         
everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut        
with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went with      
infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the              
foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills.                
   The line on the London side of Woking station was still                  
undergoing repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road      
to Maybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked          
to the hussars, and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to        
me in the thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to         
find, among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart          
with the whitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a            
time I stood regarding these vestiges....                                   
   Then I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here      
and there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found        
burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an        
open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed.                           
   I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded               
immediately. The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening        
slowly as I approached.                                                     
   It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the          
open window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No      
one had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left         
them nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house         
felt empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had        
crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the         
catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.            
   I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table         
still, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had      
left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I         
stood reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the            
probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the             
civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a              
prophecy: "In about two hundred years," I had written, "we may              
expect-" The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix      
my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken        
off to get my Daily Chronicle from the newsboy. I remembered how I          
went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had                
listened to his odd story of "Men from Mars."                               
   I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton         
and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle                
overturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home           
was desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had                 
cherished so long. And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no             
use," said a voice. "The house is deserted. No one has been here these      
ten days. Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but          
you."                                                                       
   I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the         
French window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood            
looking out.                                                                
   And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid,         
were my cousin and my wife- my wife white and tearless. She gave a          
faint cry.                                                                  
   "I came," she said. "I knew- knew-"                                      
   She put her hand to her throat- swayed. I made a step forward,           
and caught her in my arms.                                                  



                              CHAPTER 10                                    
                             THE EPILOGUE                                   

   I CANNOT but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how              
little I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable      
questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall                 
certainly provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative          
philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a         
book or two, but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the         
reason of the rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be           
regarded almost as a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the          
body of my narrative.                                                       
   At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined        
after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial        
species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and           
the reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire            
ignorance of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems,          
it is by no means a proven conclusion.                                      
   Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the           
Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the             
Heat-Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and        
South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further         
investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black              
powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element            
with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible      
that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with      
deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven         
speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to         
whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted down      
the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at the          
time, and now none is forthcoming.                                          
   The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far as      
the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have             
already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and            
almost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and      
the countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that         
the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific.        
   A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of        
another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough         
attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present           
the planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition      
I, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. In any case, we        
should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to            
define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to      
keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate      
the arrival of the next attack.                                             
   In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or            
artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to               
emerge, or they might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the          
screw opened. It seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in        
the failure of their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the            
same light.                                                                 
   Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the            
Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the              
planet Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment        
with the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of      
view of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and          
sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner               
planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar            
sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian             
disk. One needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to        
appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character.                 
   At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views        
of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We            
have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced          
in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the          
unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It         
may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from         
Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us          
of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful          
source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are          
enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the             
commonweal of mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space         
the Martians have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and          
learned their lesson, and that on the planet Venus they have found a        
securer settlement. Be that as it may, for many years yet there will        
certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian             
disk, and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring      
with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons          
of men.                                                                     
   The broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be          
exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion        
that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty         
surface of our minute sphere. Now we see further. If the Martians           
can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is            
impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this         
earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the              
thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught        
our sister planet within its toils.                                         
   Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of         
life spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system         
throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a          
remote dream. It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of         
the Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is        
the future ordained.                                                        
   I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an            
abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study         
writing by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley           
below set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me      
empty and desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles            
pass me, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a      
bicycle, children going to school, and suddenly they become vague           
and unreal, and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot,        
brooding silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the           
silent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer;            
they rise upon me tattered and dog-bitten. They gibber and grow             
fiercer, paler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I          
wake, cold and wretched, in the darkness of the night.                      
   I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and           
the Strand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts        
of the past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and               
wretched, going to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of        
life in a galvanised body. And strange, too, it is to stand on              
Primrose Hill, as I did but a day before writing this last chapter, to      
see the great province of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the      
smoke and mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the      
people walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see         
the sight-seers about the Martian machine that stands there still,          
to hear the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when         
I saw it all bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn          
of that last great day....                                                  
   And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to          
think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among           
the dead.


                              --End--


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