"The War of the Worlds\n\nby H. G. Wells [1898]\n\n\n     But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be\n     inhabited? .  .  .  Are we or they Lords of the\n     World? .  .  .  And how are all things made for man?--\n          KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)\n\n\n\nBOOK ONE\n\nTHE COMING OF THE MARTIANS\n\n\n\nCHAPTER ONE\n\nTHE EVE OF THE WAR\n\n\nNo one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth\ncentury that this world was being watched keenly and closely by\nintelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as\nmen busied themselves about their various concerns they were\nscrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a\nmicroscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and\nmultiply in a drop of water.  With infinite complacency men went to\nand fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their\nassurance of their empire over matter.  It is possible that the\ninfusoria under the microscope do the same.  No one gave a thought to\nthe older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of\nthem only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or\nimprobable.  It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of\nthose departed days.  At most terrestrial men fancied there might be\nother men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to\nwelcome a missionary enterprise.  Yet across the gulf of space, minds\nthat are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish,\nintellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with\nenvious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.  And\nearly in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.\n\nThe planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the\nsun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it\nreceives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.\nIt must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our\nworld; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its\nsurface must have begun its course.  The fact that it is scarcely one\nseventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling\nto the temperature at which life could begin.  It has air and water\nand all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.\n\nYet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer,\nup to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that\nintelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all,\nbeyond its earthly level.  Nor was it generally understood that since\nMars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the\nsuperficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that\nit is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.\n\nThe secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has\nalready gone far indeed with our neighbour.  Its physical condition is\nstill largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial\nregion the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest\nwinter.  Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have\nshrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow\nseasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and\nperiodically inundate its temperate zones.  That last stage of\nexhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a\npresent-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars.  The immediate\npressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their\npowers, and hardened their hearts.  And looking across space with\ninstruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of,\nthey see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of\nthem, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with\nvegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of\nfertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad\nstretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.\n\nAnd we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them\nat least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us.  The\nintellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant\nstruggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief\nof the minds upon Mars.  Their world is far gone in its cooling and\nthis world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they\nregard as inferior animals.  To carry warfare sunward is, indeed,\ntheir only escape from the destruction that, generation after\ngeneration, creeps upon them.\n\nAnd before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what\nruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only\nupon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its\ninferior races.  The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness,\nwere entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged\nby European immigrants, in the space of fifty years.  Are we such\napostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same\nspirit?\n\nThe Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing\nsubtlety--their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of\nours--and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh\nperfect unanimity.  Had our instruments permitted it, we might have\nseen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century.  Men\nlike Schiaparelli watched the red planet--it is odd, by-the-bye, that\nfor countless centuries Mars has been the star of war--but failed to\ninterpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so\nwell.  All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.\n\nDuring the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the\nilluminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by\nPerrotin of Nice, and then by other observers.  English readers heard\nof it first in the issue of _Nature_ dated August 2.  I am inclined to\nthink that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in\nthe vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired\nat us.  Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site\nof that outbreak during the next two oppositions.\n\nThe storm burst upon us six years ago now.  As Mars approached\nopposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange\npalpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of\nincandescent gas upon the planet.  It had occurred towards midnight of\nthe twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted,\nindicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an\nenormous velocity towards this earth.  This jet of fire had become\ninvisible about a quarter past twelve.  He compared it to a colossal\npuff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, \"as\nflaming gases rushed out of a gun.\"\n\nA singularly appropriate phrase it proved.  Yet the next day there\nwas nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the _Daily\nTelegraph_, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest\ndangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of\nthe eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer,\nat Ottershaw.  He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess\nof his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a\nscrutiny of the red planet.\n\nIn spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that\nvigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed\nlantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the\nsteady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in\nthe roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it.\nOgilvy moved about, invisible but audible.  Looking through the\ntelescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet\nswimming in the field.  It seemed such a little thing, so bright and\nsmall and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly\nflattened from the perfect round.  But so little it was, so silvery\nwarm--a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this\nwas the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that\nkept the planet in view.\n\nAs I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to\nadvance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired.  Forty\nmillions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of\nvoid.  Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust\nof the material universe swims.\n\nNear it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light,\nthree telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the\nunfathomable darkness of empty space.  You know how that blackness\nlooks on a frosty starlight night.  In a telescope it seems far\nprofounder.  And invisible to me because it was so remote and small,\nflying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible\ndistance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles,\ncame the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so\nmuch struggle and calamity and death to the earth.  I never dreamed of\nit then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring\nmissile.\n\nThat night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the\ndistant planet.  I saw it.  A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest\nprojection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and\nat that I told Ogilvy and he took my place.  The night was warm and I\nwas thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way\nin the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while\nOgilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.\n\nThat night another invisible missile started on its way to the\nearth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the\nfirst one.  I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness,\nwith patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes.  I wished I\nhad a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute\ngleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me.  Ogilvy\nwatched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and\nwalked over to his house.  Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw\nand Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.\n\nHe was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars,\nand scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were\nsignalling us.  His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a\nheavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in\nprogress.  He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic\nevolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.\n\n\"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to\none,\" he said.\n\nHundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after\nabout midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a\nflame each night.  Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on\nearth has attempted to explain.  It may be the gases of the firing\ncaused the Martians inconvenience.  Dense clouds of smoke or dust,\nvisible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey,\nfluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's\natmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.\n\nEven the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and\npopular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the\nvolcanoes upon Mars.  The seriocomic periodical _Punch_, I remember,\nmade a happy use of it in the political cartoon.  And, all\nunsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew\nearthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the\nempty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer.\nIt seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift\nfate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they\ndid.  I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph\nof the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days.\nPeople in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and\nenterprise of our nineteenth-century papers.  For my own part, I was\nmuch occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series\nof papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as\ncivilisation progressed.\n\nOne night (the first missile then could scarcely have been\n10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife.  It was\nstarlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed\nout Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so\nmany telescopes were pointed.  It was a warm night.  Coming home, a\nparty of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing\nand playing music.  There were lights in the upper windows of the\nhouses as the people went to bed.  From the railway station in the\ndistance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling,\nsoftened almost into melody by the distance.  My wife pointed out to\nme the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging\nin a framework against the sky.  It seemed so safe and tranquil.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWO\n\nTHE FALLING STAR\n\n\nThen came the night of the first falling star.  It was seen early\nin the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high\nin the atmosphere.  Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an\nordinary falling star.  Albin described it as leaving a greenish\nstreak behind it that glowed for some seconds.  Denning, our greatest\nauthority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first\nappearance was about ninety or one hundred miles.  It seemed to him\nthat it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.\n\nI was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my\nFrench windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I\nloved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it.\nYet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer\nspace must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I\nonly looked up as it passed.  Some of those who saw its flight say it\ntravelled with a hissing sound.  I myself heard nothing of that.  Many\npeople in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of\nit, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended.\nNo one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.\n\nBut very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the\nshooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on\nthe common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the\nidea of finding it.  Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from\nthe sand pits.  An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the\nprojectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every\ndirection over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half\naway.  The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose\nagainst the dawn.\n\nThe Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the\nscattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its\ndescent.  The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder,\ncaked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured\nincrustation.  It had a diameter of about thirty yards.  He approached\nthe mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most\nmeteorites are rounded more or less completely.  It was, however,\nstill so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near\napproach.  A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the\nunequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred\nto him that it might be hollow.\n\nHe remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made\nfor itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at\nits unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some\nevidence of design in its arrival.  The early morning was wonderfully\nstill, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge,\nwas already warm.  He did not remember hearing any birds that morning,\nthere was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the\nfaint movements from within the cindery cylinder.  He was all alone on\nthe common.\n\nThen suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey\nclinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling\noff the circular edge of the end.  It was dropping off in flakes and\nraining down upon the sand.  A large piece suddenly came off and fell\nwith a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.\n\nFor a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and, although\nthe heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the\nbulk to see the Thing more clearly.  He fancied even then that the\ncooling of the body might account for this, but what disturbed that\nidea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the\ncylinder.\n\nAnd then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the\ncylinder was rotating on its body.  It was such a gradual movement\nthat he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had\nbeen near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the\ncircumference.  Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated,\nuntil he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk\nforward an inch or so.  Then the thing came upon him in a flash.  The\ncylinder was artificial--hollow--with an end that screwed out!\nSomething within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!\n\n\"Good heavens!\" said Ogilvy.  \"There's a man in it--men in it! Half\nroasted to death!  Trying to escape!\"\n\nAt once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the\nflash upon Mars.\n\nThe thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he\nforgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn.  But\nluckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands\non the still-glowing metal.  At that he stood irresolute for a moment,\nthen turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into\nWoking.  The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock.\nHe met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he\ntold and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the\npit--that the man simply drove on.  He was equally unsuccessful with the\npotman who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell\nBridge.  The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an\nunsuccessful attempt to shut him into the taproom.  That sobered him a\nlittle; and when he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his\ngarden, he called over the palings and made himself understood.\n\n\"Henderson,\" he called, \"you saw that shooting star last night?\"\n\n\"Well?\" said Henderson.\n\n\"It's out on Horsell Common now.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" said Henderson.  \"Fallen meteorite!  That's good.\"\n\n\"But it's something more than a meteorite.  It's a cylinder--an\nartificial cylinder, man!  And there's something inside.\"\n\nHenderson stood up with his spade in his hand.\n\n\"What's that?\" he said.  He was deaf in one ear.\n\nOgilvy told him all that he had seen.  Henderson was a minute or so\ntaking it in.  Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and\ncame out into the road.  The two men hurried back at once to the\ncommon, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position.  But\nnow the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal\nshowed between the top and the body of the cylinder.  Air was either\nentering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.\n\nThey listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and,\nmeeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside\nmust be insensible or dead.\n\nOf course the two were quite unable to do anything.  They shouted\nconsolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get\nhelp.  One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and\ndisordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just\nas the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were\nopening their bedroom windows.  Henderson went into the railway\nstation at once, in order to telegraph the news to London.  The\nnewspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the\nidea.\n\nBy eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already\nstarted for the common to see the \"dead men from Mars.\"  That was the\nform the story took.  I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about\na quarter to nine when I went out to get my _Daily Chronicle_.  I was\nnaturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the\nOttershaw bridge to the sand pits.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THREE\n\nON HORSELL COMMON\n\n\nI found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the\nhuge hole in which the cylinder lay.  I have already described the\nappearance of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground.  The turf\nand gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion.  No\ndoubt its impact had caused a flash of fire.  Henderson and Ogilvy\nwere not there.  I think they perceived that nothing was to be done\nfor the present, and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson's house.\n\nThere were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with\ntheir feet dangling, and amusing themselves--until I stopped them--by\nthrowing stones at the giant mass.  After I had spoken to them about\nit, they began playing at \"touch\" in and out of the group of\nbystanders.\n\nAmong these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I\nemployed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his\nlittle boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were\naccustomed to hang about the railway station.  There was very little\ntalking.  Few of the common people in England had anything but the\nvaguest astronomical ideas in those days.  Most of them were staring\nquietly at the big table like end of the cylinder, which was still as\nOgilvy and Henderson had left it.  I fancy the popular expectation of\na heap of charred corpses was disappointed at this inanimate bulk.\nSome went away while I was there, and other people came.  I clambered\ninto the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet.  The\ntop had certainly ceased to rotate.\n\nIt was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of\nthis object was at all evident to me.  At the first glance it was\nreally no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown\nacross the road.  Not so much so, indeed.  It looked like a rusty gas\nfloat.  It required a certain amount of scientific education to\nperceive that the grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that\nthe yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid\nand the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue.  \"Extra-terrestrial\" had no\nmeaning for most of the onlookers.\n\nAt that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had\ncome from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it\ncontained any living creature.  I thought the unscrewing might be\nautomatic.  In spite of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men\nin Mars.  My mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its\ncontaining manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might\narise, whether we should find coins and models in it, and so forth.\nYet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea.  I felt an\nimpatience to see it opened.  About eleven, as nothing seemed\nhappening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury.\nBut I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract\ninvestigations.\n\nIn the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very\nmuch.  The early editions of the evening papers had startled London\nwith enormous headlines:\n\n  \"A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS.\"\n\n  \"REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,\"\n\nand so forth.  In addition, Ogilvy's wire to the Astronomical Exchange\nhad roused every observatory in the three kingdoms.\n\nThere were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station\nstanding in the road by the sand pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham,\nand a rather lordly carriage.  Besides that, there was quite a heap of\nbicycles.  In addition, a large number of people must have walked, in\nspite of the heat of the day, from Woking and Chertsey, so that there\nwas altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily dressed\nladies among the others.\n\nIt was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind,\nand the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees.  The\nburning heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards\nOttershaw was blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off\nvertical streamers of smoke.  An enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in\nthe Chobham Road had sent up his son with a barrow-load of green\napples and ginger beer.\n\nGoing to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a group of\nabout half a dozen men--Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man\nthat I afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with\nseveral workmen wielding spades and pickaxes.  Stent was giving\ndirections in a clear, high-pitched voice.  He was standing on the\ncylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson\nand streaming with perspiration, and something seemed to have\nirritated him.\n\nA large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its\nlower end was still embedded.  As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the\nstaring crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and\nasked me if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of\nthe manor.\n\nThe growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to\ntheir excavations, especially the boys.  They wanted a light railing\nput up, and help to keep the people back.  He told me that a faint\nstirring was occasionally still audible within the case, but that the\nworkmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them.\nThe case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the\nfaint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior.\n\nI was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the\nprivileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure.  I failed to\nfind Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from\nLondon by the six o'clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then\nabout a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to\nthe station to waylay him.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FOUR\n\nTHE CYLINDER OPENS\n\n\nWhen I returned to the common the sun was setting.  Scattered groups\nwere hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons\nwere returning.  The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out\nblack against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people,\nperhaps.  There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared\nto be going on about the pit.  Strange imaginings passed through my\nmind.  As I drew nearer I heard Stent's voice:\n\n\"Keep back!  Keep back!\"\n\nA boy came running towards me.\n\n\"It's a-movin',\" he said to me as he passed; \"a-screwin' and\na-screwin' out.  I don't like it.  I'm a-goin' 'ome, I am.\"\n\nI went on to the crowd.  There were really, I should think, two or\nthree hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two\nladies there being by no means the least active.\n\n\"He's fallen in the pit!\" cried some one.\n\n\"Keep back!\" said several.\n\nThe crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through.  Every one\nseemed greatly excited.  I heard a peculiar humming sound from the\npit.\n\n\"I say!\" said Ogilvy; \"help keep these idiots back.  We don't know\nwhat's in the confounded thing, you know!\"\n\nI saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was,\nstanding on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.\nThe crowd had pushed him in.\n\nThe end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within.  Nearly\ntwo feet of shining screw projected.  Somebody blundered against me,\nand I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw.  I\nturned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of\nthe cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion.  I stuck\nmy elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the\nThing again.  For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black.\nI had the sunset in my eyes.\n\nI think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly something a\nlittle unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man.  I know\nI did.  But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the\nshadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two\nluminous disks--like eyes.  Then something resembling a little grey\nsnake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the\nwrithing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another.\n\nA sudden chill came over me.  There was a loud shriek from a woman\nbehind.  I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,\nfrom which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my\nway back from the edge of the pit.  I saw astonishment giving place to\nhorror on the faces of the people about me.  I heard inarticulate\nexclamations on all sides.  There was a general movement backwards.\nI saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit.  I found\nmyself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running\noff, Stent among them.  I looked again at the cylinder, and\nungovernable terror gripped me.  I stood petrified and staring.\n\nA big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was\nrising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.  As it bulged up and\ncaught the light, it glistened like wet leather.\n\nTwo large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly.  The\nmass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had,\none might say, a face.  There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless\nbrim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva.  The whole\ncreature heaved and pulsated convulsively.  A lank tentacular\nappendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.\n\nThose who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the\nstrange horror of its appearance.  The peculiar V-shaped mouth with\nits pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a\nchin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this\nmouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the\nlungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness\nof movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above\nall, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at\nonce vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous.  There was\nsomething fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy\ndeliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty.  Even at this\nfirst encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and\ndread.\n\nSuddenly the monster vanished.  It had toppled over the brim of the\ncylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great\nmass of leather.  I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith\nanother of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the\naperture.\n\nI turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees,\nperhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for\nI could not avert my face from these things.\n\nThere, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped,\npanting, and waited further developments.  The common round the sand\npits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated\nterror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at\nthe edge of the pit in which they lay.  And then, with a renewed\nhorror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of\nthe pit.  It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but\nshowing as a little black object against the hot western sun.  Now he\ngot his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until\nonly his head was visible.  Suddenly he vanished, and I could have\nfancied a faint shriek had reached me.  I had a momentary impulse to\ngo back and help him that my fears overruled.\n\nEverything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the\nheap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made.  Anyone coming\nalong the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the\nsight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more\nstanding in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes,\nbehind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in\nshort, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of\nsand.  The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black\nagainst the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted\nvehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the\nground.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FIVE\n\nTHE HEAT-RAY\n\n\nAfter the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the\ncylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind\nof fascination paralysed my actions.  I remained standing knee-deep in\nthe heather, staring at the mound that hid them.  I was a battleground\nof fear and curiosity.\n\nI did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate\nlonging to peer into it.  I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,\nseeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand\nheaps that hid these new-comers to our earth.  Once a leash of thin\nblack whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset\nand was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up,\njoint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a\nwobbling motion.  What could be going on there?\n\nMost of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a\nlittle crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the\ndirection of Chobham.  Evidently they shared my mental conflict.\nThere were few near me.  One man I approached--he was, I perceived,\na neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name--and accosted.\nBut it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.\n\n\"What ugly _brutes_!\" he said.  \"Good God!  What ugly brutes!\"  He\nrepeated this over and over again.\n\n\"Did you see a man in the pit?\" I said; but he made no answer to\nthat.  We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side,\nderiving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company.  Then I\nshifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a\nyard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was\nwalking towards Woking.\n\nThe sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened.  The\ncrowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I\nheard now a faint murmur from it.  The little knot of people towards\nChobham dispersed.  There was scarcely an intimation of movement from\nthe pit.\n\nIt was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I\nsuppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore\nconfidence.  At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent\nmovement upon the sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather\nforce as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained\nunbroken.  Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance,\nstop, watch, and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin\nirregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated\nhorns.  I, too, on my side began to move towards the pit.\n\nThen I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand\npits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels.  I saw a\nlad trundling off the barrow of apples.  And then, within thirty yards\nof the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little\nblack knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.\n\nThis was the Deputation.  There had been a hasty consultation, and\nsince the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,\nintelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by\napproaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.\n\nFlutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the\nleft.  It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards\nI learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this\nattempt at communication.  This little group had in its advance\ndragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost\ncomplete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed\nit at discreet distances.\n\nSuddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous\ngreenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which\ndrove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.\n\nThis smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was\nso bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of\nbrown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to\ndarken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after\ntheir dispersal.  At the same time a faint hissing sound became\naudible.\n\nBeyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag\nat its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small\nvertical black shapes upon the black ground.  As the green smoke arose,\ntheir faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished.\nThen slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud,\ndroning noise.  Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the\nghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.\n\nForthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one\nto another, sprang from the scattered group of men.  It was as if some\ninvisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame.  It was\nas if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.\n\nThen, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering\nand falling, and their supporters turning to run.\n\nI stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping\nfrom man to man in that little distant crowd.  All I felt was that it\nwas something very strange.  An almost noiseless and blinding flash of\nlight, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft\nof heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry\nfurze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames.  And far away\ntowards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden\nbuildings suddenly set alight.\n\nIt was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death,\nthis invisible, inevitable sword of heat.  I perceived it coming\ntowards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded\nand stupefied to stir.  I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits\nand the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled.  Then\nit was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn\nthrough the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a\ncurving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled.\nSomething fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from\nWoking station opens out on the common.  Forth-with the hissing and\nhumming ceased, and the black, dome-like object sank slowly out of\nsight into the pit.\n\nAll this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood\nmotionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light.  Had that\ndeath swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in\nmy surprise.  But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me\nsuddenly dark and unfamiliar.\n\nThe undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except\nwhere its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the\nearly night.  It was dark, and suddenly void of men.  Overhead the\nstars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale,\nbright, almost greenish blue.  The tops of the pine trees and the\nroofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the western\nafterglow.  The Martians and their appliances were altogether\ninvisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror\nwobbled.  Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and\nglowed still, and the houses towards Woking station were sending up\nspires of flame into the stillness of the evening air.\n\nNothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment.  The\nlittle group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out\nof existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me,\nhad scarcely been broken.\n\nIt came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless,\nunprotected, and alone.  Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from\nwithout, came--fear.\n\nWith an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the\nheather.\n\nThe fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only\nof the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me.  Such an\nextraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping\nsilently as a child might do.  Once I had turned, I did not dare to\nlook back.\n\nI remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being\nplayed with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety,\nthis mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap\nafter me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SIX\n\nTHE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD\n\n\nIt is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay\nmen so swiftly and so silently.  Many think that in some way they are\nable to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute\nnon-conductivity.  This intense heat they project in a parallel beam\nagainst any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic\nmirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a\nlighthouse projects a beam of light.  But no one has absolutely proved\nthese details.  However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat\nis the essence of the matter.  Heat, and invisible, instead of\nvisible, light.  Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its\ntouch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass,\nand when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam.\n\nThat night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the\npit, charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the\ncommon from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.\n\nThe news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and\nOttershaw about the same time.  In Woking the shops had closed when\nthe tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so\nforth, attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the\nHorsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at\nlast upon the common.  You may imagine the young people brushed up\nafter the labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would\nmake any novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a\ntrivial flirtation.  You may figure to yourself the hum of voices\nalong the road in the gloaming. . . .\n\nAs yet, of course, few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder\nhad opened, though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to\nthe post office with a special wire to an evening paper.\n\nAs these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they\nfound little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the\nspinning mirror over the sand pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt,\nsoon infected by the excitement of the occasion.\n\nBy half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may\nhave been a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place,\nbesides those who had left the road to approach the Martians nearer.\nThere were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their\nbest, under instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter\nthem from approaching the cylinder.  There was some booing from those\nmore thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an\noccasion for noise and horse-play.\n\nStent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision,\nhad telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians\nemerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these\nstrange creatures from violence.  After that they returned to lead that\nill-fated advance.  The description of their death, as it was seen by\nthe crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three\npuffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of flame.\n\nBut that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine.  Only\nthe fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of\nthe Heat-Ray saved them.  Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror\nbeen a few yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale.  They\nsaw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were,\nlit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight.  Then,\nwith a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit, the beam\nswung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees\nthat line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows,\nfiring the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a\nportion of the gable of the house nearest the corner.\n\nIn the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees, the\npanic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for some\nmoments.  Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and\nsingle leaves like puffs of flame.  Hats and dresses caught fire.  Then\ncame a crying from the common.  There were shrieks and shouts, and\nsuddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with\nhis hands clasped over his head, screaming.\n\n\"They're coming!\" a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was\nturning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to\nWoking again.  They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep.\nWhere the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd\njammed, and a desperate struggle occurred.  All that crowd did not\nescape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were\ncrushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the\ndarkness.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SEVEN\n\nHOW I REACHED HOME\n\n\nFor my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress\nof blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather.  All\nabout me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless\nsword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before\nit descended and smote me out of life.  I came into the road between\nthe crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.\n\nAt last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the violence of\nmy emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside.\nThat was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks.  I\nfell and lay still.\n\nI must have remained there some time.\n\nI sat up, strangely perplexed.  For a moment, perhaps, I could not\nclearly understand how I came there.  My terror had fallen from me\nlike a garment.  My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from\nits fastener.  A few minutes before, there had only been three real\nthings before me--the immensity of the night and space and nature, my\nown feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death.  Now it\nwas as if something turned over, and the point of view altered\nabruptly.  There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to\nthe other.  I was immediately the self of every day again--a decent,\nordinary citizen.  The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the\nstarting flames, were as if they had been in a dream.  I asked myself\nhad these latter things indeed happened?  I could not credit it.\n\nI rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge.  My\nmind was blank wonder.  My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their\nstrength.  I dare say I staggered drunkenly.  A head rose over the\narch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared.  Beside\nhim ran a little boy.  He passed me, wishing me good night.  I was\nminded to speak to him, but did not.  I answered his greeting with a\nmeaningless mumble and went on over the bridge.\n\nOver the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit\nsmoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying\nsouth--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone.  A dim group of\npeople talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little\nrow of gables that was called Oriental Terrace.  It was all so real\nand so familiar.  And that behind me!  It was frantic, fantastic!\nSuch things, I told myself, could not be.\n\nPerhaps I am a man of exceptional moods.  I do not know how far my\nexperience is common.  At times I suffer from the strangest sense of\ndetachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all\nfrom the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time,\nout of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.  This feeling\nwas very strong upon me that night.  Here was another side to my\ndream.\n\nBut the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the\nswift death flying yonder, not two miles away.  There was a noise of\nbusiness from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight.  I\nstopped at the group of people.\n\n\"What news from the common?\" said I.\n\nThere were two men and a woman at the gate.\n\n\"Eh?\" said one of the men, turning.\n\n\"What news from the common?\" I said.\n\n\"'Ain't yer just _been_ there?\" asked the men.\n\n\"People seem fair silly about the common,\" said the woman over the\ngate.  \"What's it all abart?\"\n\n\"Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?\" said I; \"the creatures\nfrom Mars?\"\n\n\"Quite enough,\" said the woman over the gate.  \"Thenks\"; and all\nthree of them laughed.\n\nI felt foolish and angry.  I tried and found I could not tell them\nwhat I had seen.  They laughed again at my broken sentences.\n\n\"You'll hear more yet,\" I said, and went on to my home.\n\nI startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I.  I went into\nthe dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could\ncollect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen.  The\ndinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained\nneglected on the table while I told my story.\n\n\"There is one thing,\" I said, to allay the fears I had aroused;\n\"they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl.  They may keep\nthe pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out\nof it. . . .  But the horror of them!\"\n\n\"Don't, dear!\" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her\nhand on mine.\n\n\"Poor Ogilvy!\" I said.  \"To think he may be lying dead there!\"\n\nMy wife at least did not find my experience incredible.  When I saw\nhow deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.\n\n\"They may come here,\" she said again and again.\n\nI pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her.\n\n\"They can scarcely move,\" I said.\n\nI began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had\ntold me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves\non the earth.  In particular I laid stress on the gravitational\ndifficulty.  On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three\ntimes what it is on the surface of Mars.  A Martian, therefore, would\nweigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength\nwould be the same.  His own body would be a cope of lead to him.  That,\nindeed, was the general opinion.  Both _The Times_ and the _Daily\nTelegraph_, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both\noverlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.\n\nThe atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen\nor far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars.\nThe invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians\nindisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their\nbodies.  And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that\nsuch mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able\nto dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.\n\nBut I did not consider these points at the time, and so my\nreasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders.  With wine and\nfood, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring\nmy wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.\n\n\"They have done a foolish thing,\" said I, fingering my wineglass.\n\"They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror.\nPerhaps they expected to find no living things--certainly no\nintelligent living things.\"\n\n\"A shell in the pit\" said I, \"if the worst comes to the worst will\nkill them all.\"\n\nThe intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my\nperceptive powers in a state of erethism.  I remember that dinner\ntable with extraordinary vividness even now.  My dear wife's sweet\nanxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white\ncloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days\neven philosophical writers had many little luxuries--the crimson-purple\nwine in my glass, are photographically distinct.  At the end of\nit I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's\nrashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.\n\nSo some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in\nhis nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless\nsailors in want of animal food.  \"We will peck them to death tomorrow,\nmy dear.\"\n\nI did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to\neat for very many strange and terrible days.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER EIGHT\n\nFRIDAY NIGHT\n\n\nThe most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and\nwonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing\nof the commonplace habits of our social order with the first\nbeginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social\norder headlong.  If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses\nand drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand\npits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless\nit were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or\nLondon people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were\nat all affected by the new-comers.  Many people had heard of the\ncylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it\ncertainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany\nwould have done.\n\nIn London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing the\ngradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his\nevening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving\nno reply--the man was killed--decided not to print a special edition.\n\nEven within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were\ninert.  I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to\nwhom I spoke.  All over the district people were dining and supping;\nworking men were gardening after the labours of the day, children\nwere being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes\nlove-making, students sat over their books.\n\nMaybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and\ndominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger,\nor even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of\nexcitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most\npart the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on\nas it had done for countless years--as though no planet Mars existed\nin the sky.  Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was\nthe case.\n\nIn Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and\ngoing on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were\nalighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most\nordinary way.  A boy from the town, trenching on Smith's monopoly, was\nselling papers with the afternoon's news.  The ringing impact of\ntrucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled\nwith their shouts of \"Men from Mars!\"  Excited men came into the\nstation about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more\ndisturbance than drunkards might have done.  People rattling\nLondonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and\nsaw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the\ndirection of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving\nacross the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath\nfire was happening.  It was only round the edge of the common that any\ndisturbance was perceptible.  There were half a dozen villas burning\non the Woking border.  There were lights in all the houses on the\ncommon side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake\ntill dawn.\n\nA curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but\nthe crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges.  One or\ntwo adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness\nand crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now\nand again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept\nthe common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow.  Save for such, that\nbig area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay\nabout on it all night under the stars, and all the next day.  A noise\nof hammering from the pit was heard by many people.\n\nSo you have the state of things on Friday night.  In the centre,\nsticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,\nwas this cylinder.  But the poison was scarcely working yet.  Around\nit was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few\ndark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there.\nHere and there was a burning bush or tree.  Beyond was a fringe of\nexcitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not\ncrept as yet.  In the rest of the world the stream of life still\nflowed as it had flowed for immemorial years.  The fever of war that\nwould presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain,\nhad still to develop.\n\nAll night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless,\nindefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and\never and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the\nstarlit sky.\n\nAbout eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and\ndeployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon.  Later a\nsecond company marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of\nthe common.  Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on\nthe common earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be\nmissing.  The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and\nwas busy questioning the crowd at midnight.  The military authorities\nwere certainly alive to the seriousness of the business.  About\neleven, the next morning's papers were able to say, a squadron of\nhussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan\nregiment started from Aldershot.\n\nA few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road,\nWoking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the\nnorthwest.  It had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness\nlike summer lightning.  This was the second cylinder.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER NINE\n\nTHE FIGHTING BEGINS\n\n\nSaturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense.  It was a day of\nlassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating\nbarometer.  I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in\nsleeping, and I rose early.  I went into my garden before breakfast\nand stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring\nbut a lark.\n\nThe milkman came as usual.  I heard the rattle of his chariot and I\nwent round to the side gate to ask the latest news.  He told me that\nduring the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that\nguns were expected.  Then--a familiar, reassuring note--I heard a train\nrunning towards Woking.\n\n\"They aren't to be killed,\" said the milkman, \"if that can possibly\nbe avoided.\"\n\nI saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then\nstrolled in to breakfast.  It was a most unexceptional morning.  My\nneighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or\nto destroy the Martians during the day.\n\n\"It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable,\" he said.  \"It\nwould be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might\nlearn a thing or two.\"\n\nHe came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for\nhis gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic.  At the same\ntime he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet\nGolf Links.\n\n\"They say,\" said he, \"that there's another of those blessed things\nfallen there--number two.  But one's enough, surely.  This lot'll cost\nthe insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled.\"  He\nlaughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this.  The\nwoods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to\nme.  \"They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick\nsoil of pine needles and turf,\" he said, and then grew serious over\n\"poor Ogilvy.\"\n\nAfter breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down\ntowards the common.  Under the railway bridge I found a group of\nsoldiers--sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets\nunbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots\ncoming to the calf.  They told me no one was allowed over the canal,\nand, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the\nCardigan men standing sentinel there.  I talked with these soldiers\nfor a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous\nevening.  None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the\nvaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions.  They\nsaid that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the\ntroops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards.\nThe ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common\nsoldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible\nfight with some acuteness.  I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they\nbegan to argue among themselves.\n\n\"Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I,\" said one.\n\n\"Get aht!\" said another.  \"What's cover against this 'ere 'eat?\nSticks to cook yer!  What we got to do is to go as near as the\nground'll let us, and then drive a trench.\"\n\n\"Blow yer trenches!  You always want trenches; you ought to ha'\nbeen born a rabbit Snippy.\"\n\n\"Ain't they got any necks, then?\" said a third, abruptly--a little,\ncontemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.\n\nI repeated my description.\n\n\"Octopuses,\" said he, \"that's what I calls 'em.  Talk about fishers\nof men--fighters of fish it is this time!\"\n\n\"It ain't no murder killing beasts like that,\" said the first\nspeaker.\n\n\"Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?\" said\nthe little dark man.  \"You carn tell what they might do.\"\n\n\"Where's your shells?\" said the first speaker.  \"There ain't no\ntime.  Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once.\"\n\nSo they discussed it.  After a while I left them, and went on to\nthe railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.\n\nBut I will not weary the reader with a description of that long\nmorning and of the longer afternoon.  I did not succeed in getting a\nglimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were\nin the hands of the military authorities.  The soldiers I addressed\ndidn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy.  I\nfound people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the\nmilitary, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the\ntobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common.  The\nsoldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and\nleave their houses.\n\nI got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the\nday was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took\na cold bath in the afternoon.  About half past four I went up to the\nrailway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had\ncontained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent,\nHenderson, Ogilvy, and the others.  But there was little I didn't\nknow.  The Martians did not show an inch of themselves.  They seemed\nbusy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost\ncontinuous streamer of smoke.  Apparently they were busy getting ready\nfor a struggle.  \"Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without\nsuccess,\" was the stereotyped formula of the papers.  A sapper told me\nit was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole.  The\nMartians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the\nlowing of a cow.\n\nI must confess the sight of all this armament, all this\npreparation, greatly excited me.  My imagination became belligerent,\nand defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my\nschoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back.  It hardly seemed a\nfair fight to me at that time.  They seemed very helpless in that pit\nof theirs.\n\nAbout three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured\nintervals from Chertsey or Addlestone.  I learned that the smouldering\npine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled,\nin the hope of destroying that object before it opened.  It was only\nabout five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham for use against\nthe first body of Martians.\n\nAbout six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the\nsummerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon\nus, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately\nafter a gust of firing.  Close on the heels of that came a violent\nrattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and,\nstarting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the\nOriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the\nlittle church beside it slide down into ruin.  The pinnacle of the\nmosque had vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as\nif a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it.  One of our chimneys\ncracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came\nclattering down the tiles and made a heap of broken red fragments upon\nthe flower bed by my study window.\n\nI and my wife stood amazed.  Then I realised that the crest of\nMaybury Hill must be within range of the Martians' Heat-Ray now that\nthe college was cleared out of the way.\n\nAt that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out\ninto the road.  Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go\nupstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for.\n\n\"We can't possibly stay here,\" I said; and as I spoke the firing\nreopened for a moment upon the common.\n\n\"But where are we to go?\" said my wife in terror.\n\nI thought perplexed.  Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead.\n\n\"Leatherhead!\" I shouted above the sudden noise.\n\nShe looked away from me downhill.  The people were coming out of\ntheir houses, astonished.\n\n\"How are we to get to Leatherhead?\" she said.\n\nDown the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway\nbridge; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College;\ntwo others dismounted, and began running from house to house.  The\nsun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the\ntrees, seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon\neverything.\n\n\"Stop here,\" said I; \"you are safe here\"; and I started off at once\nfor the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart.\nI ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the\nhill would be moving.  I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what\nwas going on behind his house.  A man stood with his back to me,\ntalking to him.\n\n\"I must have a pound,\" said the landlord, \"and I've no one to drive\nit.\"\n\n\"I'll give you two,\" said I, over the stranger's shoulder.\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"And I'll bring it back by midnight,\" I said.\n\n\"Lord!\" said the landlord; \"what's the hurry?  I'm selling my bit\nof a pig.  Two pounds, and you bring it back?  What's going on now?\"\n\nI explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the\ndog cart.  At the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the\nlandlord should leave his.  I took care to have the cart there and\nthen, drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife\nand servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such\nplate as we had, and so forth.  The beech trees below the house were\nburning while I did this, and the palings up the road glowed red.\nWhile I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came\nrunning up.  He was going from house to house, warning people to\nleave.  He was going on as I came out of my front door, lugging my\ntreasures, done up in a tablecloth.  I shouted after him:\n\n\"What news?\"\n\nHe turned, stared, bawled something about \"crawling out in a thing\nlike a dish cover,\" and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest.\nA sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a\nmoment.  I ran to my neighbour's door and rapped to satisfy myself of\nwhat I already knew, that his wife had gone to London with him and had\nlocked up their house.  I went in again, according to my promise, to\nget my servant's box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail\nof the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into the\ndriver's seat beside my wife.  In another moment we were clear of the\nsmoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill\ntowards Old Woking.\n\nIn front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either\nside of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign.  I saw\nthe doctor's cart ahead of me.  At the bottom of the hill I turned my\nhead to look at the hillside I was leaving.  Thick streamers of black\nsmoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still\nair, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward.  The\nsmoke already extended far away to the east and west--to the Byfleet\npine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west.  The road was dotted\nwith people running towards us.  And very faint now, but very distinct\nthrough the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that\nwas presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles.\nApparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range\nof their Heat-Ray.\n\nI am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my\nattention to the horse.  When I looked back again the second hill had\nhidden the black smoke.  I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave\nhim a loose rein until Woking and Send lay between us and that\nquivering tumult.  I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and\nSend.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TEN\n\nIN THE STORM\n\n\nLeatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill.  The scent of\nhay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the\nhedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses.\nThe heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down\nMaybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very\npeaceful and still.  We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about\nnine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper\nwith my cousins and commended my wife to their care.\n\nMy wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed\noppressed with forebodings of evil.  I talked to her reassuringly,\npointing out that the Martians were tied to the Pit by sheer\nheaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but\nshe answered only in monosyllables.  Had it not been for my promise to\nthe innkeeper, she would, I think, have urged me to stay in\nLeatherhead that night.  Would that I had!  Her face, I remember, was\nvery white as we parted.\n\nFor my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day.  Something\nvery like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised\ncommunity had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very\nsorry that I had to return to Maybury that night.  I was even afraid\nthat that last fusillade I had heard might mean the extermination of\nour invaders from Mars.  I can best express my state of mind by saying\nthat I wanted to be in at the death.\n\nIt was nearly eleven when I started to return.  The night was\nunexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted passage of my\ncousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as\nthe day.  Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath\nstirred the shrubs about us.  My cousins' man lit both lamps.  Happily,\nI knew the road intimately.  My wife stood in the light of the\ndoorway, and watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart.  Then\nabruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side\nwishing me good hap.\n\nI was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife's\nfears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians.  At that\ntime I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's\nfighting.  I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated\nthe conflict.  As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I\nreturned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western\nhorizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the\nsky.  The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there\nwith masses of black and red smoke.\n\nRipley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so\nthe village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly escaped an\naccident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people\nstood with their backs to me.  They said nothing to me as I passed.  I\ndo not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill,\nnor do I know if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping\nsecurely, or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the\nterror of the night.\n\nFrom Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the\nWey, and the red glare was hidden from me.  As I ascended the little\nhill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the\ntrees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that\nwas upon me.  Then I heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford Church\nbehind me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its\ntree-tops and roofs black and sharp against the red.\n\nEven as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and\nshowed the distant woods towards Addlestone.  I felt a tug at the\nreins.  I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a\nthread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling\ninto the field to my left.  It was the third falling star!\n\nClose on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced\nout the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst\nlike a rocket overhead.  The horse took the bit between his teeth and\nbolted.\n\nA moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down\nthis we clattered.  Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as\nrapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen.  The thunderclaps,\ntreading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling\naccompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric\nmachine than the usual detonating reverberations.  The flickering\nlight was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my\nface as I drove down the slope.\n\nAt first I regarded little but the road before me, and then\nabruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving\nrapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill.  At first I took it\nfor the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it\nto be in swift rolling movement.  It was an elusive vision--a moment\nof bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red\nmasses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of\nthe pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp\nand bright.\n\nAnd this Thing I saw!  How can I describe it?  A monstrous tripod,\nhigher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and\nsmashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering\nmetal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel\ndangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling\nwith the riot of the thunder.  A flash, and it came out vividly,\nheeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear\nalmost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards\nnearer.  Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently\nalong the ground?  That was the impression those instant flashes gave.\nBut instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on\na tripod stand.\n\nThen suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted,\nas brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were\nsnapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared,\nrushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me.  And I was galloping hard\nto meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went\naltogether.  Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head\nhard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled\nover upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung\nsideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.\n\nI crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in\nthe water, under a clump of furze.  The horse lay motionless (his neck\nwas broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black\nbulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still\nspinning slowly.  In another moment the colossal mechanism went\nstriding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.\n\nSeen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere\ninsensate machine driving on its way.  Machine it was, with a ringing\nmetallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which\ngripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange\nbody.  It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen\nhood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable\nsuggestion of a head looking about.  Behind the main body was a huge\nmass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of\ngreen smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster\nswept by me.  And in an instant it was gone.\n\nSo much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the\nlightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.\n\nAs it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the\nthunder--\"Aloo!  Aloo!\"--and in another minute it was with its\ncompanion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field.  I\nhave no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten\ncylinders they had fired at us from Mars.\n\nFor some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by\nthe intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about\nin the distance over the hedge tops.  A thin hail was now beginning,\nand as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into\nclearness again.  Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the\nnight swallowed them up.\n\nI was soaked with hail above and puddle water below.  It was some\ntime before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to\na drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.\n\nNot far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood,\nsurrounded by a patch of potato garden.  I struggled to my feet at\nlast, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a\nrun for this.  I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people\nhear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I desisted,\nand, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way,\nsucceeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into\nthe pine woods towards Maybury.\n\nUnder cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my\nown house.  I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath.  It\nwas very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming\ninfrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in\ncolumns through the gaps in the heavy foliage.\n\nIf I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I\nshould have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street\nCobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead.  But that\nnight the strangeness of things about me, and my physical\nwretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin,\ndeafened and blinded by the storm.\n\nI had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as\nmuch motive as I had.  I staggered through the trees, fell into a\nditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out\ninto the lane that ran down from the College Arms.  I say splashed,\nfor the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy\ntorrent.  There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me\nreeling back.\n\nHe gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I\ncould gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him.  So heavy was the\nstress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to\nwin my way up the hill.  I went close up to the fence on the left and\nworked my way along its palings.\n\nNear the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of\nlightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair\nof boots.  Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the\nflicker of light had passed.  I stood over him waiting for the next\nflash.  When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not\nshabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay\ncrumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung violently\nagainst it.\n\nOvercoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before\ntouched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his\nheart.  He was quite dead.  Apparently his neck had been broken.  The\nlightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me.  I\nsprang to my feet.  It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose\nconveyance I had taken.\n\nI stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill.  I made my\nway by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house.\nNothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there\nstill came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up\nagainst the drenching hail.  So far as I could see by the flashes, the\nhouses about me were mostly uninjured.  By the College Arms a dark\nheap lay in the road.\n\nDown the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the\nsound of feet, but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them.  I\nlet myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door,\nstaggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down.  My imagination\nwas full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body\nsmashed against the fence.\n\nI crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall,\nshivering violently.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER ELEVEN\n\nAT THE WINDOW\n\n\nI have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of\nexhausting themselves.  After a time I discovered that I was cold and\nwet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet.  I\ngot up almost mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some\nwhiskey, and then I was moved to change my clothes.\n\nAfter I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so\nI do not know.  The window of my study looks over the trees and the\nrailway towards Horsell Common.  In the hurry of our departure this\nwindow had been left open.  The passage was dark, and, by contrast with\nthe picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed\nimpenetrably dark.  I stopped short in the doorway.\n\nThe thunderstorm had passed.  The towers of the Oriental College\nand the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a\nvivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible.  Across\nthe light huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to\nand fro.\n\nIt seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on\nfire--a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and\nwrithing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red\nreflection upon the cloud-scud above.  Every now and then a haze of\nsmoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid\nthe Martian shapes.  I could not see what they were doing, nor the\nclear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied\nupon.  Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of\nit danced on the wall and ceiling of the study.  A sharp, resinous\ntang of burning was in the air.\n\nI closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window.  As I\ndid so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the\nhouses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and\nblackened pine woods of Byfleet.  There was a light down below the\nhill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along\nthe Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins.\nThe light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black\nheap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow\noblongs.  Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part\nsmashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails.\n\nBetween these three main centres of light--the houses, the train,\nand the burning county towards Chobham--stretched irregular patches of\ndark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and\nsmoking ground.  It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set\nwith fire.  It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries\nat night.  At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I\npeered intently for them.  Later I saw against the light of Woking\nstation a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across\nthe line.\n\nAnd this was the little world in which I had been living securely\nfor years, this fiery chaos!  What had happened in the last seven\nhours I still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to\nguess, the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish\nlumps I had seen disgorged from the cylinder.  With a queer feeling of\nimpersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down,\nand stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three\ngigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare about\nthe sand pits.\n\nThey seemed amazingly busy.  I began to ask myself what they could\nbe.  Were they intelligent mechanisms?  Such a thing I felt was\nimpossible.  Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing,\nusing, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body?  I began to\ncompare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time\nin my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an\nintelligent lower animal.\n\nThe storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning\nland the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west,\nwhen a soldier came into my garden.  I heard a slight scraping at the\nfence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I\nlooked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings.  At the\nsight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the\nwindow eagerly.\n\n\"Hist!\" said I, in a whisper.\n\nHe stopped astride of the fence in doubt.  Then he came over and\nacross the lawn to the corner of the house.  He bent down and stepped\nsoftly.\n\n\"Who's there?\" he said, also whispering, standing under the window\nand peering up.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" I asked.\n\n\"God knows.\"\n\n\"Are you trying to hide?\"\n\n\"That's it.\"\n\n\"Come into the house,\" I said.\n\nI went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the\ndoor again.  I could not see his face.  He was hatless, and his coat\nwas unbuttoned.\n\n\"My God!\" he said, as I drew him in.\n\n\"What has happened?\" I asked.\n\n\"What hasn't?\"  In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of\ndespair.  \"They wiped us out--simply wiped us out,\" he repeated again\nand again.\n\nHe followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room.\n\n\"Take some whiskey,\" I said, pouring out a stiff dose.\n\nHe drank it.  Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his\nhead on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a\nperfect passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of\nmy own recent despair, stood beside him, wondering.\n\nIt was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my\nquestions, and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly.  He was a\ndriver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven.  At\nthat time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the\nfirst party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second\ncylinder under cover of a metal shield.\n\nLater this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first\nof the fighting-machines I had seen.  The gun he drove had been\nunlimbered near Horsell, in order to command the sand pits, and its\narrival it was that had precipitated the action.  As the limber\ngunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came\ndown, throwing him into a depression of the ground.  At the same\nmoment the gun exploded behind him, the ammunition blew up, there was\nfire all about him, and he found himself lying under a heap of charred\ndead men and dead horses.\n\n\"I lay still,\" he said, \"scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter\nof a horse atop of me.  We'd been wiped out.  And the smell--good\nGod!  Like burnt meat!  I was hurt across the back by the fall of\nthe horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better.  Just like\nparade it had been a minute before--then stumble, bang, swish!\"\n\n\"Wiped out!\" he said.\n\nHe had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out\nfurtively across the common.  The Cardigan men had tried a rush, in\nskirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence.\nThen the monster had risen to its feet and had begun to walk leisurely\nto and fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its\nheadlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human\nbeing.  A kind of arm carried a complicated metallic case, about which\ngreen flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked\nthe Heat-Ray.\n\nIn a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a\nliving thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it\nthat was not already a blackened skeleton was burning.  The hussars\nhad been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw\nnothing of them.  He heard the Martians rattle for a time and then\nbecome still.  The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses\nuntil the last; then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear, and\nthe town became a heap of fiery ruins.  Then the Thing shut off the\nHeat-Ray, and turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle\naway towards the smouldering pine woods that sheltered the second\ncylinder.  As it did so a second glittering Titan built itself up out\nof the pit.\n\nThe second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman\nbegan to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards\nHorsell.  He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the\nroad, and so escaped to Woking.  There his story became ejaculatory.\nThe place was impassable.  It seems there were a few people alive\nthere, frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded.  He was\nturned aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of\nbroken wall as one of the Martian giants returned.  He saw this one\npursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock\nhis head against the trunk of a pine tree.  At last, after nightfall,\nthe artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway\nembankment.\n\nSince then he had been skulking along towards Maybury, in the hope\nof getting out of danger Londonward.  People were hiding in trenches\nand cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards Woking\nvillage and Send.  He had been consumed with thirst until he found one\nof the water mains near the railway arch smashed, and the water\nbubbling out like a spring upon the road.\n\nThat was the story I got from him, bit by bit.  He grew calmer\ntelling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen.  He had\neaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I\nfound some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the\nroom.  We lit no lamp for fear of attracting the Martians, and ever\nand again our hands would touch upon bread or meat.  As he talked,\nthings about us came darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled\nbushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct.  It\nwould seem that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn.\nI began to see his face, blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine was\nalso.\n\nWhen we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study,\nand I looked again out of the open window.  In one night the valley\nhad become a valley of ashes.  The fires had dwindled now.  Where\nflames had been there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless\nruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees\nthat the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the\npitiless light of dawn.  Yet here and there some object had had the\nluck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse\nthere, white and fresh amid the wreckage.  Never before in the history\nof warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal.\nAnd shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic\ngiants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were\nsurveying the desolation they had made.\n\nIt seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again\npuffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the\nbrightening dawn--streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.\n\nBeyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham.  They became pillars\nof bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWELVE\n\nWHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON\n\n\nAs the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we\nhad watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs.\n\nThe artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay\nin.  He proposed, he said, to make his way Londonward, and thence\nrejoin his battery--No. 12, of the Horse Artillery.  My plan was to\nreturn at once to Leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of the\nMartians impressed me that I had determined to take my wife to\nNewhaven, and go with her out of the country forthwith.  For I already\nperceived clearly that the country about London must inevitably be the\nscene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures as these could be\ndestroyed.\n\nBetween us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with\nits guarding giants.  Had I been alone, I think I should have taken my\nchance and struck across country.  But the artilleryman dissuaded me:\n\"It's no kindness to the right sort of wife,\" he said, \"to make her a\nwidow\"; and in the end I agreed to go with him, under cover of the\nwoods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him.\nThence I would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead.\n\nI should have started at once, but my companion had been in active\nservice and he knew better than that.  He made me ransack the house\nfor a flask, which he filled with whiskey; and we lined every\navailable pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat.  Then\nwe crept out of the house, and ran as quickly as we could down the\nill-made road by which I had come overnight.  The houses seemed\ndeserted. In the road lay a group of three charred bodies close\ntogether, struck dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were things\nthat people had dropped--a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the\nlike poor valuables.  At the corner turning up towards the post\noffice a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture, and horseless,\nheeled over on a broken wheel.  A cash box had been hastily smashed\nopen and thrown under the debris.\n\nExcept the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of\nthe houses had suffered very greatly here.  The Heat-Ray had shaved\nthe chimney tops and passed.  Yet, save ourselves, there did not seem\nto be a living soul on Maybury Hill.  The majority of the inhabitants\nhad escaped, I suppose, by way of the Old Woking road--the road I had\ntaken when I drove to Leatherhead--or they had hidden.\n\nWe went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now\nfrom the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the\nhill.  We pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a\nsoul.  The woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened\nruins of woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain\nproportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage\ninstead of green.\n\nOn our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees;\nit had failed to secure its footing.  In one place the woodmen had\nbeen at work on Saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a\nclearing, with heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its engine.\nHard by was a temporary hut, deserted.  There was not a breath of wind\nthis morning, and everything was strangely still.  Even the birds were\nhushed, and as we hurried along I and the artilleryman talked in\nwhispers and looked now and again over our shoulders.  Once or twice\nwe stopped to listen.\n\nAfter a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the\nclatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers\nriding slowly towards Woking.  We hailed them, and they halted while\nwe hurried towards them.  It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates\nof the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the\nartilleryman told me was a heliograph.\n\n\"You are the first men I've seen coming this way this morning,\"\nsaid the lieutenant.  \"What's brewing?\"\n\nHis voice and face were eager.  The men behind him stared\ncuriously.  The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and\nsaluted.\n\n\"Gun destroyed last night, sir.  Have been hiding.  Trying to\nrejoin battery, sir.  You'll come in sight of the Martians, I expect,\nabout half a mile along this road.\"\n\n\"What the dickens are they like?\" asked the lieutenant.\n\n\"Giants in armour, sir.  Hundred feet high.  Three legs and a body\nlike 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir.\"\n\n\"Get out!\" said the lieutenant.  \"What confounded nonsense!\"\n\n\"You'll see, sir.  They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire\nand strikes you dead.\"\n\n\"What d'ye mean--a gun?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the Heat-Ray.\nHalfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at\nme.  I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road.\n\n\"It's perfectly true,\" I said.\n\n\"Well,\" said the lieutenant, \"I suppose it's my business to see it\ntoo.  Look here\"--to the artilleryman--\"we're detailed here clearing\npeople out of their houses.  You'd better go along and report yourself\nto Brigadier-General Marvin, and tell him all you know.  He's at\nWeybridge.  Know the way?\"\n\n\"I do,\" I said; and he turned his horse southward again.\n\n\"Half a mile, you say?\" said he.\n\n\"At most,\" I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward.  He\nthanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more.\n\nFarther along we came upon a group of three women and two children\nin the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage.  They had\ngot hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with\nunclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture.  They were all too\nassiduously engaged to talk to us as we passed.\n\nBy Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the\ncountry calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight.  We were far\nbeyond the range of the Heat-Ray there, and had it not been for the\nsilent desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of\npacking in others, and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge\nover the railway and staring down the line towards Woking, the day\nwould have seemed very like any other Sunday.\n\nSeveral farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road\nto Addlestone, and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw, across\na stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-pounders standing neatly at equal\ndistances pointing towards Woking.  The gunners stood by the guns\nwaiting, and the ammunition waggons were at a business-like distance.\nThe men stood almost as if under inspection.\n\n\"That's good!\" said I.  \"They will get one fair shot, at any rate.\"\n\nThe artilleryman hesitated at the gate.\n\n\"I shall go on,\" he said.\n\nFarther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a\nnumber of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart, and\nmore guns behind.\n\n\"It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow,\" said the\nartilleryman.  \"They 'aven't seen that fire-beam yet.\"\n\nThe officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over\nthe treetops southwestward, and the men digging would stop every now\nand again to stare in the same direction.\n\nByfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars,\nsome of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about.\nThree or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles,\nand an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the\nvillage street.  There were scores of people, most of them\nsufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes.  The\nsoldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realise\nthe gravity of their position.  We saw one shrivelled old fellow with\na huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids,\nangrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them behind.\nI stopped and gripped his arm.\n\n\"Do you know what's over there?\" I said, pointing at the pine tops\nthat hid the Martians.\n\n\"Eh?\" said he, turning.  \"I was explainin' these is vallyble.\"\n\n\"Death!\" I shouted.  \"Death is coming!  Death!\" and leaving him to\ndigest that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-man.  At the\ncorner I looked back.  The soldier had left him, and he was still\nstanding by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and\nstaring vaguely over the trees.\n\nNo one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were\nestablished; the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen\nin any town before.  Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing\nmiscellany of conveyances and horseflesh.  The respectable inhabitants\nof the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily\ndressed, were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping,\nchildren excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this\nastonishing variation of their Sunday experiences.  In the midst of it\nall the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration,\nand his bell was jangling out above the excitement.\n\nI and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking\nfountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with\nus. Patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in\nwhite--were warning people to move now or to take refuge in their\ncellars as soon as the firing began.  We saw as we crossed the\nrailway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and\nabout the railway station, and the swarming platform was piled with\nboxes and packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe,\nin order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and\nI have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the\nspecial trains that were put on at a later hour.\n\nWe remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found\nourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames\njoin.  Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a\nlittle cart.  The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are\nto be hired, and there was a ferry across the river.  On the\nShepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of\nShepperton Church--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the\ntrees.\n\nHere we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives.  As yet the\nflight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more\npeople than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross.\nPeople came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife\nwere even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of\ntheir household goods piled thereon.  One man told us he meant to try\nto get away from Shepperton station.\n\nThere was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting.  The idea\npeople seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply\nformidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be\ncertainly destroyed in the end.  Every now and then people would\nglance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but\neverything over there was still.\n\nAcross the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything\nwas quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side.  The people who\nlanded there from the boats went tramping off down the lane.  The big\nferryboat had just made a journey.  Three or four soldiers stood on\nthe lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without\noffering to help.  The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited\nhours.\n\n\"What's that?\" cried a boatman, and \"Shut up, you fool!\" said a man\nnear me to a yelping dog.  Then the sound came again, this time from\nthe direction of Chertsey, a muffled thud--the sound of a gun.\n\nThe fighting was beginning.  Almost immediately unseen batteries\nacross the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up\nthe chorus, firing heavily one after the other.  A woman screamed.\nEveryone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet\ninvisible to us.  Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows\nfeeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows\nmotionless in the warm sunlight.\n\n\"The sojers'll stop 'em,\" said a woman beside me, doubtfully.  A\nhaziness rose over the treetops.\n\nThen suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff\nof smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the\nground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing\ntwo or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished.\n\n\"Here they are!\" shouted a man in a blue jersey.  \"Yonder! D'yer\nsee them?  Yonder!\"\n\nQuickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armoured\nMartians appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat\nmeadows that stretched towards Chertsey, and striding hurriedly\ntowards the river.  Little cowled figures they seemed at first, going\nwith a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds.\n\nThen, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth.  Their armoured\nbodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the\nguns, growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer.  One on the extreme\nleft, the remotest that is, flourished a huge case high in the air,\nand the ghostly, terrible Heat-Ray I had already seen on Friday night\nsmote towards Chertsey, and struck the town.\n\nAt sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the crowd\nnear the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck.\nThere was no screaming or shouting, but a silence.  Then a hoarse\nmurmur and a movement of feet--a splashing from the water.  A man, too\nfrightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung\nround and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his\nburden.  A woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me.  I\nturned with the rush of the people, but I was not too terrified for\nthought.  The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind.  To get under water!\nThat was it!\n\n\"Get under water!\" I shouted, unheeded.\n\nI faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching Martian,\nrushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water.\nOthers did the same.  A boatload of people putting back came leaping\nout as I rushed past.  The stones under my feet were muddy and\nslippery, and the river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet\nscarcely waist-deep.  Then, as the Martian towered overhead scarcely\na couple of hundred yards away, I flung myself forward under the\nsurface.  The splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the\nriver sounded like thunderclaps in my ears.  People were landing\nhastily on both sides of the river.  But the Martian machine took no\nmore notice for the moment of the people running this way and that\nthan a man would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his\nfoot has kicked.  When, half suffocated, I raised my head above water,\nthe Martian's hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing\nacross the river, and as it advanced it swung loose what must have\nbeen the generator of the Heat-Ray.\n\nIn another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading\nhalfway across.  The knees of its foremost legs bent at the farther\nbank, and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height\nagain, close to the village of Shepperton.  Forthwith the six guns\nwhich, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the\noutskirts of that village, fired simultaneously.  The sudden near\nconcussion, the last close upon the first, made my heart jump.  The\nmonster was already raising the case generating the Heat-Ray as the\nfirst shell burst six yards above the hood.\n\nI gave a cry of astonishment.  I saw and thought nothing of the\nother four Martian monsters; my attention was riveted upon the nearer\nincident.  Simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the\nbody as the hood twisted round in time to receive, but not in time to\ndodge, the fourth shell.\n\nThe shell burst clean in the face of the Thing.  The hood bulged,\nflashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh\nand glittering metal.\n\n\"Hit!\" shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer.\n\nI heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me.  I\ncould have leaped out of the water with that momentary exultation.\n\nThe decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did\nnot fall over.  It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer\nheeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now\nrigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton.  The living\nintelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to\nthe four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate\ndevice of metal whirling to destruction.  It drove along in a straight\nline, incapable of guidance.  It struck the tower of Shepperton\nChurch, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have\ndone, swerved aside, blundered on and collapsed with tremendous force\ninto the river out of my sight.\n\nA violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam,\nmud, and shattered metal shot far up into the sky.  As the camera of\nthe Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into\nsteam.  In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but\nalmost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend upstream.  I saw\npeople struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting\nfaintly above the seething and roar of the Martian's collapse.\n\nFor a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need\nof self-preservation.  I splashed through the tumultuous water,\npushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the\nbend.  Half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the\nconfusion of the waves.  The fallen Martian came into sight\ndownstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged.\n\nThick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through\nthe tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and\nvaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash\nand spray of mud and froth into the air.  The tentacles swayed and\nstruck like living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of\nthese movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for\nits life amid the waves.  Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid\nwere spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.\n\nMy attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious\nyelling, like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing\ntowns.  A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me\nand pointed.  Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with\ngigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey.\nThe Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly.\n\nAt that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until\nmovement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as\nlong as I could.  The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly\ngrowing hotter.\n\nWhen for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the\nhair and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white\nfog that at first hid the Martians altogether.  The noise was\ndeafening.  Then I saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified\nby the mist.  They had passed by me, and two were stooping over the\nfrothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade.\n\nThe third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two\nhundred yards from me, the other towards Laleham.  The generators of\nthe Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way\nand that.\n\nThe air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of\nnoises--the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling\nhouses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the\ncrackling and roaring of fire.  Dense black smoke was leaping up to\nmingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and\nfro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent\nwhite, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames.  The\nnearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint\nand pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro.\n\nFor a moment perhaps I stood there, breast-high in the almost\nboiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape.  Through\nthe reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river\nscrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs\nhurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running to and\nfro in utter dismay on the towing path.\n\nThen suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping\ntowards me.  The houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch, and\ndarted out flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar.  The Ray\nflickered up and down the towing path, licking off the people who ran\nthis way and that, and came down to the water's edge not fifty yards\nfrom where I stood.  It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the\nwater in its track rose in a boiling weal crested with steam.  I\nturned shoreward.\n\nIn another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point had\nrushed upon me.  I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded,\nagonised, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the\nshore.  Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end.  I fell\nhelplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare\ngravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames.\nI expected nothing but death.\n\nI have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a\nscore of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel,\nwhirling it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense,\nand then of the four carrying the debris of their comrade between\nthem, now clear and then presently faint through a veil of smoke,\nreceding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of\nriver and meadow.  And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle\nI had escaped.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\nHOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE\n\n\nAfter getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial\nweapons, the Martians retreated to their original position upon\nHorsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris of\ntheir smashed companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray\nand negligible victim as myself.  Had they left their comrade and\npushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and\nLondon but batteries of twelve-pounder guns, and they would certainly\nhave reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their approach;\nas sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent would have been as\nthe earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago.\n\nBut they were in no hurry.  Cylinder followed cylinder on its\ninterplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours brought them\nreinforcement.  And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now\nfully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with\nfurious energy.  Every minute a fresh gun came into position until,\nbefore twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the\nhilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black\nmuzzle.  And through the charred and desolated area--perhaps twenty\nsquare miles altogether--that encircled the Martian encampment on\nHorsell Common, through charred and ruined villages among the green\ntrees, through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a\nday ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs\nthat were presently to warn the gunners of the Martian approach.  But\nthe Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger of\nhuman proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either\ncylinder, save at the price of his life.\n\nIt would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the\nafternoon in going to and fro, transferring everything from the second\nand third cylinders--the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third\nat Pyrford--to their original pit on Horsell Common.  Over that, above\nthe blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and\nwide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast\nfighting-machines and descended into the pit.  They were hard at work\nthere far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green smoke\nthat rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and\neven, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom Downs.\n\nAnd while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next\nsally, and in front of me Humanity gathered for the battle, I made my\nway with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning\nWeybridge towards London.\n\nI saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting down-stream;\nand throwing off the most of my sodden clothes, I went after it,\ngained it, and so escaped out of that destruction.  There were no\noars in the boat, but I contrived to paddle, as well as my parboiled\nhands would allow, down the river towards Halliford and Walton, going\nvery tediously and continually looking behind me, as you may well\nunderstand.  I followed the river, because I considered that the water\ngave me my best chance of escape should these giants return.\n\nThe hot water from the Martian's overthrow drifted downstream with\nme, so that for the best part of a mile I could see little of either\nbank.  Once, however, I made out a string of black figures hurrying\nacross the meadows from the direction of Weybridge.  Halliford, it\nseemed, was deserted, and several of the houses facing the river were\non fire.  It was strange to see the place quite tranquil, quite\ndesolate under the hot blue sky, with the smoke and little threads of\nflame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon.  Never before\nhad I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive\ncrowd.  A little farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and\nglowing, and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late\nfield of hay.\n\nFor a long time I drifted, so painful and weary was I after the\nviolence I had been through, and so intense the heat upon the water.\nThen my fears got the better of me again, and I resumed my paddling.\nThe sun scorched my bare back.  At last, as the bridge at Walton was\ncoming into sight round the bend, my fever and faintness overcame my\nfears, and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down, deadly sick,\namid the long grass.  I suppose the time was then about four or five\no'clock.  I got up presently, walked perhaps half a mile without\nmeeting a soul, and then lay down again in the shadow of a hedge.  I\nseem to remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last\nspurt.  I was also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no\nmore water.  It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I\ncannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead\nworried me excessively.\n\nI do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that probably\nI dozed.  I became aware of him as a seated figure in soot-smudged\nshirt sleeves, and with his upturned, clean-shaven face staring at\na faint flickering that danced over the sky.  The sky was what is\ncalled a mackerel sky--rows and rows of faint down-plumes of\ncloud, just tinted with the midsummer sunset.\n\nI sat up, and at the rustle of my motion he looked at me quickly.\n\n\"Have you any water?\" I asked abruptly.\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"You have been asking for water for the last hour,\" he said.\n\nFor a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other.  I\ndare say he found me a strange enough figure, naked, save for my\nwater-soaked trousers and socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders\nblackened by the smoke.  His face was a fair weakness, his chin\nretreated, and his hair lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his low\nforehead; his eyes were rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring.\nHe spoke abruptly, looking vacantly away from me.\n\n\"What does it mean?\" he said.  \"What do these things mean?\"\n\nI stared at him and made no answer.\n\nHe extended a thin white hand and spoke in almost a complaining\ntone.\n\n\"Why are these things permitted?  What sins have we done?  The\nmorning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my\nbrain for the afternoon, and then--fire, earthquake, death!  As if it\nwere Sodom and Gomorrah!  All our work undone, all the work---- What\nare these Martians?\"\n\n\"What are we?\" I answered, clearing my throat.\n\nHe gripped his knees and turned to look at me again.  For half a\nminute, perhaps, he stared silently.\n\n\"I was walking through the roads to clear my brain,\" he said.  \"And\nsuddenly--fire, earthquake, death!\"\n\nHe relapsed into silence, with his chin now sunken almost to his\nknees.\n\nPresently he began waving his hand.\n\n\"All the work--all the Sunday schools--What have we done--what has\nWeybridge done?  Everything gone--everything destroyed.  The church!\nWe rebuilt it only three years ago.  Gone!  Swept out of existence!\nWhy?\"\n\nAnother pause, and he broke out again like one demented.\n\n\"The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!\" he shouted.\n\nHis eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of\nWeybridge.\n\nBy this time I was beginning to take his measure.  The tremendous\ntragedy in which he had been involved--it was evident he was a\nfugitive from Weybridge--had driven him to the very verge of his\nreason.\n\n\"Are we far from Sunbury?\" I said, in a matter-of-fact tone.\n\n\"What are we to do?\" he asked.  \"Are these creatures everywhere?\nHas the earth been given over to them?\"\n\n\"Are we far from Sunbury?\"\n\n\"Only this morning I officiated at early celebration----\"\n\n\"Things have changed,\" I said, quietly.  \"You must keep your head.\nThere is still hope.\"\n\n\"Hope!\"\n\n\"Yes.  Plentiful hope--for all this destruction!\"\n\nI began to explain my view of our position.  He listened at first,\nbut as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their\nformer stare, and his regard wandered from me.\n\n\"This must be the beginning of the end,\" he said, interrupting me.\n\"The end!  The great and terrible day of the Lord!  When men shall\ncall upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide\nthem--hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!\"\n\nI began to understand the position.  I ceased my laboured\nreasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand\non his shoulder.\n\n\"Be a man!\" said I.  \"You are scared out of your wits!  What good\nis religion if it collapses under calamity?  Think of what earthquakes\nand floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men!  Did you\nthink God had exempted Weybridge?  He is not an insurance agent.\"\n\nFor a time he sat in blank silence.\n\n\"But how can we escape?\" he asked, suddenly.  \"They are\ninvulnerable, they are pitiless.\"\n\n\"Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other,\" I answered. \"And the\nmightier they are the more sane and wary should we be.  One of them\nwas killed yonder not three hours ago.\"\n\n\"Killed!\" he said, staring about him.  \"How can God's ministers be\nkilled?\"\n\n\"I saw it happen.\" I proceeded to tell him.  \"We have chanced to\ncome in for the thick of it,\" said I, \"and that is all.\"\n\n\"What is that flicker in the sky?\" he asked abruptly.\n\nI told him it was the heliograph signalling--that it was the sign\nof human help and effort in the sky.\n\n\"We are in the midst of it,\" I said, \"quiet as it is.  That flicker\nin the sky tells of the gathering storm.  Yonder, I take it are the\nMartians, and Londonward, where those hills rise about Richmond and\nKingston and the trees give cover, earthworks are being thrown up and\nguns are being placed.  Presently the Martians will be coming this way\nagain.\"\n\nAnd even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a\ngesture.\n\n\"Listen!\" he said.\n\nFrom beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance\nof distant guns and a remote weird crying.  Then everything was still.\nA cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us.  High in the\nwest the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of\nWeybridge and Shepperton and the hot, still splendour of the sunset.\n\n\"We had better follow this path,\" I said, \"northward.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\nIN LONDON\n\n\nMy younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking.\nHe was a medical student working for an imminent examination, and he\nheard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning.  The morning\npapers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles\non the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and\nvaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity.\n\nThe Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a\nnumber of people with a quick-firing gun, so the story ran.  The\ntelegram concluded with the words: \"Formidable as they seem to be, the\nMartians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and,\nindeed, seem incapable of doing so.  Probably this is due to the\nrelative strength of the earth's gravitational energy.\"  On that last\ntext their leader-writer expanded very comfortingly.\n\nOf course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which\nmy brother went that day, were intensely interested, but there were no\nsigns of any unusual excitement in the streets.  The afternoon papers\npuffed scraps of news under big headlines.  They had nothing to tell\nbeyond the movements of troops about the common, and the burning of\nthe pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight.  Then the\n_St. James's Gazette_, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare\nfact of the interruption of telegraphic communication.  This was\nthought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the\nline.  Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of\nmy drive to Leatherhead and back.\n\nMy brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the\ndescription in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from\nmy house.  He made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order,\nas he says, to see the Things before they were killed.  He dispatched\na telegram, which never reached me, about four o'clock, and spent the\nevening at a music hall.\n\nIn London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my\nbrother reached Waterloo in a cab.  On the platform from which the\nmidnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an\naccident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night.  The nature\nof the accident he could not ascertain; indeed, the railway\nauthorities did not clearly know at that time.  There was very little\nexcitement in the station, as the officials, failing to realise that\nanything further than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction\nhad occurred, were running the theatre trains which usually passed\nthrough Woking round by Virginia Water or Guildford.  They were busy\nmaking the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the\nSouthampton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions.  A nocturnal\nnewspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, to\nwhom he bears a slight resemblance, waylaid and tried to interview\nhim.  Few people, excepting the railway officials, connected the\nbreakdown with the Martians.\n\nI have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday\nmorning \"all London was electrified by the news from Woking.\"  As a\nmatter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant\nphrase.  Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the\npanic of Monday morning.  Those who did took some time to realise all\nthat the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed.  The\nmajority of people in London do not read Sunday papers.\n\nThe habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the\nLondoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course\nin the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors:\n\"About seven o'clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder,\nand, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely\nwrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an\nentire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment.  No details are known.\nMaxims have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field\nguns have been disabled by them.  Flying hussars have been galloping\ninto Chertsey.  The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards\nChertsey or Windsor.  Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and\nearthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonward.\"  That\nwas how the Sunday _Sun_ put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt\n\"handbook\" article in the _Referee_ compared the affair to a menagerie\nsuddenly let loose in a village.\n\nNo one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured\nMartians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be\nsluggish: \"crawling,\" \"creeping painfully\"--such expressions occurred\nin almost all the earlier reports.  None of the telegrams could have\nbeen written by an eyewitness of their advance.  The Sunday papers\nprinted separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in\ndefault of it.  But there was practically nothing more to tell people\nuntil late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press\nagencies the news in their possession.  It was stated that the people\nof Walton and Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along the\nroads Londonward, and that was all.\n\nMy brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning,\nstill in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night.  There\nhe heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for\npeace.  Coming out, he bought a _Referee_.  He became alarmed at the\nnews in this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if\ncommunication were restored.  The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and\ninnumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely\naffected by the strange intelligence that the news venders were\ndisseminating.  People were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only\non account of the local residents.  At the station he heard for the\nfirst time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted.\nThe porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been\nreceived in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that\nthese had abruptly ceased.  My brother could get very little precise\ndetail out of them.\n\n\"There's fighting going on about Weybridge\" was the extent of their\ninformation.\n\nThe train service was now very much disorganised.  Quite a number\nof people who had been expecting friends from places on the\nSouth-Western network were standing about the station.  One\ngrey-headed old gentleman came and abused the South-Western Company\nbitterly to my brother.  \"It wants showing up,\" he said.\n\nOne or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston,\ncontaining people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the\nlocks closed and a feeling of panic in the air.  A man in a blue and\nwhite blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.\n\n\"There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts\nand things, with boxes of valuables and all that,\" he said.  \"They\ncome from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been\nguns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have\ntold them to get off at once because the Martians are coming.  We\nheard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was\nthunder.  What the dickens does it all mean?  The Martians can't get\nout of their pit, can they?\"\n\nMy brother could not tell him.\n\nAfterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to\nthe clients of the underground railway, and that the Sunday\nexcursionists began to return from all over the South-Western\n\"lung\"--Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth--at\nunnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague\nhearsay to tell of.  Everyone connected with the terminus seemed\nill-tempered.\n\nAbout five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely\nexcited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost\ninvariably closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western\nstations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and\ncarriages crammed with soldiers.  These were the guns that were\nbrought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston.  There was\nan exchange of pleasantries: \"You'll get eaten!\"  \"We're the\nbeast-tamers!\" and so forth.  A little while after that a squad of\npolice came into the station and began to clear the public off the\nplatforms, and my brother went out into the street again.\n\nThe church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of\nSalvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road.  On the bridge\na number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came\ndrifting down the stream in patches.  The sun was just setting, and the\nClock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most\npeaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with\nlong transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud.  There was talk of a\nfloating body.  One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told\nmy brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west.\n\nIn Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who\nhad just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and\nstaring placards.  \"Dreadful catastrophe!\" they bawled one to the\nother down Wellington Street.  \"Fighting at Weybridge!  Full\ndescription!  Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!\"  He had to\ngive threepence for a copy of that paper.\n\nThen it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full\npower and terror of these monsters.  He learned that they were not\nmerely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds\nswaying vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and\nsmite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand\nagainst them.\n\nThey were described as \"vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred\nfeet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot\nout a beam of intense heat.\"  Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns,\nhad been planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially\nbetween the Woking district and London.  Five of the machines had been\nseen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been\ndestroyed.  In the other cases the shells had missed, and the\nbatteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays.  Heavy\nlosses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was\noptimistic.\n\nThe Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable.  They\nhad retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle\nabout Woking.  Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon\nthem from all sides.  Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor,\nPortsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich--even from the north; among others,\nlong wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich.  Altogether one\nhundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly\ncovering London.  Never before in England had there been such a vast\nor rapid concentration of military material.\n\nAny further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed\nat once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and\ndistributed.  No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the\nstrangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to\navoid and discourage panic.  No doubt the Martians were strange and\nterrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more\nthan twenty of them against our millions.\n\nThe authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the\ncylinders, that at the outside there could not be more than five in\neach cylinder--fifteen altogether.  And one at least was disposed\nof--perhaps more.  The public would be fairly warned of the approach\nof danger, and elaborate measures were being taken for the protection\nof the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs.  And so, with\nreiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the\nauthorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation\nclosed.\n\nThis was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was\nstill wet, and there had been no time to add a word of comment.  It\nwas curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents\nof the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place.\n\nAll down Wellington Street people could be seen fluttering out the\npink sheets and reading, and the Strand was suddenly noisy with the\nvoices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers.  Men came\nscrambling off buses to secure copies.  Certainly this news excited\npeople intensely, whatever their previous apathy.  The shutters of a\nmap shop in the Strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a\nman in his Sunday raiment, lemon-yellow gloves even, was visible\ninside the window hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the glass.\n\nGoing on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his\nhand, my brother saw some of the fugitives from West Surrey.  There\nwas a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in\na cart such as greengrocers use.  He was driving from the direction of\nWestminster Bridge; and close behind him came a hay waggon with five\nor six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles.\nThe faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance\ncontrasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best appearance of the\npeople on the omnibuses.  People in fashionable clothing peeped at\nthem out of cabs.  They stopped at the Square as if undecided which\nway to take, and finally turned eastward along the Strand.  Some way\nbehind these came a man in workday clothes, riding one of those\nold-fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel.  He was dirty and\nwhite in the face.\n\nMy brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such\npeople.  He had a vague idea that he might see something of me.  He\nnoticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic.  Some of\nthe refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses.\nOne was professing to have seen the Martians.  \"Boilers on stilts, I\ntell you, striding along like men.\"  Most of them were excited and\nanimated by their strange experience.\n\nBeyond Victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade with\nthese arrivals.  At all the street corners groups of people were\nreading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday\nvisitors.  They seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the\nroads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day.  My\nbrother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory\nanswers from most.\n\nNone of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who\nassured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous\nnight.\n\n\"I come from Byfleet,\" he said; \"man on a bicycle came through the\nplace in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to\ncome away.  Then came soldiers.  We went out to look, and there were\nclouds of smoke to the south--nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming\nthat way.  Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from\nWeybridge.  So I've locked up my house and come on.\"\n\nAt the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the\nauthorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the\ninvaders without all this inconvenience.\n\nAbout eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible\nall over the south of London.  My brother could not hear it for the\ntraffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet\nback streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly.\n\nHe walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent's Park,\nabout two.  He was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at\nthe evident magnitude of the trouble.  His mind was inclined to run,\neven as mine had run on Saturday, on military details.  He thought of\nall those silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside;\nhe tried to imagine \"boilers on stilts\" a hundred feet high.\n\nThere were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford\nStreet, and several in the Marylebone Road, but so slowly was the news\nspreading that Regent Street and Portland Place were full of their\nusual Sunday-night promenaders, albeit they talked in groups, and\nalong the edge of Regent's Park there were as many silent couples\n\"walking out\" together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had\nbeen.  The night was warm and still, and a little oppressive; the\nsound of guns continued intermittently, and after midnight there\nseemed to be sheet lightning in the south.\n\nHe read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me.\nHe was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly.  He\nreturned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination\nnotes.  He went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from\nlurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door\nknockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour\nof bells.  Red reflections danced on the ceiling.  For a moment he lay\nastonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad.\nThen he jumped out of bed and ran to the window.\n\nHis room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down\nthe street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window sash,\nand heads in every kind of night disarray appeared.  Enquiries were\nbeing shouted.  \"They are coming!\" bawled a policeman, hammering at\nthe door; \"the Martians are coming!\" and hurried to the next door.\n\nThe sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street\nBarracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing\nsleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin.  There was a noise of doors\nopening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from\ndarkness into yellow illumination.\n\nUp the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly\ninto noise at the corner, rising to a clattering climax under the\nwindow, and dying away slowly in the distance.  Close on the rear of\nthis came a couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of\nflying vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm station, where\nthe North-Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming\ndown the gradient into Euston.\n\nFor a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank\nastonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and\ndelivering their incomprehensible message.  Then the door behind him\nopened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed\nonly in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his\nwaist, his hair disordered from his pillow.\n\n\"What the devil is it?\" he asked.  \"A fire?  What a devil of a\nrow!\"\n\nThey both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear\nwhat the policemen were shouting.  People were coming out of the side\nstreets, and standing in groups at the corners talking.\n\n\"What the devil is it all about?\" said my brother's fellow lodger.\n\nMy brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with\neach garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing\nexcitement.  And presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers\ncame bawling into the street:\n\n\"London in danger of suffocation!  The Kingston and Richmond\ndefences forced!  Fearful massacres in the Thames Valley!\"\n\nAnd all about him--in the rooms below, in the houses on each side\nand across the road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the\nhundred other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne\nPark district and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn\nand St. John's Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch and\nHighbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the\nvastness of London from Ealing to East Ham--people were rubbing their\neyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions,\ndressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew\nthrough the streets.  It was the dawn of the great panic.  London,\nwhich had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert, was\nawakened, in the small hours of Monday morning, to a vivid sense of\ndanger.\n\nUnable from his window to learn what was happening, my brother went\ndown and out into the street, just as the sky between the parapets of\nthe houses grew pink with the early dawn.  The flying people on foot\nand in vehicles grew more numerous every moment.  \"Black Smoke!\" he\nheard people crying, and again \"Black Smoke!\"  The contagion of such\na unanimous fear was inevitable.  As my brother hesitated on the\ndoor-step, he saw another news vender approaching, and got a paper\nforthwith.  The man was running away with the rest, and selling his\npapers for a shilling each as he ran--a grotesque mingling of profit\nand panic.\n\nAnd from this paper my brother read that catastrophic dispatch of\nthe Commander-in-Chief:\n\n\"The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and\npoisonous vapour by means of rockets.  They have smothered our\nbatteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are\nadvancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way.  It\nis impossible to stop them.  There is no safety from the Black Smoke\nbut in instant flight.\"\n\nThat was all, but it was enough.  The whole population of the great\nsix-million city was stirring, slipping, running; presently it would\nbe pouring _en masse_ northward.\n\n\"Black Smoke!\" the voices cried.  \"Fire!\"\n\nThe bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart\ncarelessly driven smashed, amid shrieks and curses, against the water\ntrough up the street.  Sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the\nhouses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps.\nAnd overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm.\n\nHe heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down\nstairs behind him.  His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in\ndressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.\n\nAs my brother began to realise the import of all these things, he\nturned hastily to his own room, put all his available money--some ten\npounds altogether--into his pockets, and went out again into the\nstreets.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\nWHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY\n\n\nIt was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under\nthe hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was\nwatching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the\nMartians had resumed the offensive.  So far as one can ascertain from\nthe conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of\nthem remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine\nthat night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of\ngreen smoke.\n\nBut three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing\nslowly and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford\ntowards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant\nbatteries against the setting sun.  These Martians did not advance in\na body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest\nfellow.  They communicated with one another by means of sirenlike\nhowls, running up and down the scale from one note to another.\n\nIt was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St.\nGeorge's Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford.  The Ripley\ngunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been\nplaced in such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual\nvolley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village,\nwhile the Martian, without using his Heat-Ray, walked serenely over\ntheir guns, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and\nso came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he\ndestroyed.\n\nThe St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a better\nmettle.  Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been\nquite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them.  They laid their\nguns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about\na thousand yards' range.\n\nThe shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few\npaces, stagger, and go down.  Everybody yelled together, and the guns\nwere reloaded in frantic haste.  The overthrown Martian set up a\nprolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant,\nanswering him, appeared over the trees to the south.  It would seem\nthat a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells.  The\nwhole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground,\nand, simultaneously, both his companions brought their Heat-Rays to\nbear on the battery.  The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about\nthe guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were\nalready running over the crest of the hill escaped.\n\nAfter this it would seem that the three took counsel together and\nhalted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they\nremained absolutely stationary for the next half hour.  The Martian\nwho had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small\nbrown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of\nblight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support.  About\nnine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees\nagain.\n\nIt was a few minutes past nine that night when these three\nsentinels were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick\nblack tube.  A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the\nseven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a\ncurved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and the village of\nSend, southwest of Ripley.\n\nA dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they\nbegan to move, and warned the waiting batteries about Ditton and\nEsher.  At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly\narmed with tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against\nthe western sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we\nhurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward out\nof Halliford.  They moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a\nmilky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height.\n\nAt this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began\nrunning; but I knew it was no good running from a Martian, and I\nturned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the\nbroad ditch by the side of the road.  He looked back, saw what I was\ndoing, and turned to join me.\n\nThe two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury, the\nremoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away\ntowards Staines.\n\nThe occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up\ntheir positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute\nsilence.  It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns.  Never\nsince the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so\nstill.  To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had\nprecisely the same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary possession\nof the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the\nstars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St.\nGeorge's Hill and the woods of Painshill.\n\nBut facing that crescent everywhere--at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton,\nEsher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river, and across\nthe flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees\nor village houses gave sufficient cover--the guns were waiting.  The\nsignal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and\nvanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a\ntense expectation.  The Martians had but to advance into the line of\nfire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns\nglittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a\nthunderous fury of battle.\n\nNo doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those\nvigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle--how\nmuch they understood of us.  Did they grasp that we in our millions\nwere organized, disciplined, working together?  Or did they interpret\nour spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady\ninvestment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of\nonslaught in a disturbed hive of bees?  Did they dream they might\nexterminate us?  (At that time no one knew what food they needed.)  A\nhundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that\nvast sentinel shape.  And in the back of my mind was the sense of all\nthe huge unknown and hidden forces Londonward.  Had they prepared\npitfalls? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare?  Would\nthe Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of\ntheir mighty province of houses?\n\nThen, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and\npeering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of\na gun.  Another nearer, and then another.  And then the Martian beside\nus raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy\nreport that made the ground heave.  The one towards Staines answered\nhim.  There was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation.\n\nI was so excited by these heavy minute-guns following one another\nthat I so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to\nclamber up into the hedge and stare towards Sunbury.  As I did so a\nsecond report followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards\nHounslow.  I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such\nevidence of its work.  But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with\none solitary star, and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath.\nAnd there had been no crash, no answering explosion.  The silence was\nrestored; the minute lengthened to three.\n\n\"What has happened?\" said the curate, standing up beside me.\n\n\"Heaven knows!\" said I.\n\nA bat flickered by and vanished.  A distant tumult of shouting\nbegan and ceased.  I looked again at the Martian, and saw he was now\nmoving eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion.\n\nEvery moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring\nupon him; but the evening calm was unbroken.  The figure of the Martian\ngrew smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering\nnight had swallowed him up.  By a common impulse we clambered higher.\nTowards Sunbury was a dark appearance, as though a conical hill had\nsuddenly come into being there, hiding our view of the farther\ncountry; and then, remoter across the river, over Walton, we saw\nanother such summit.  These hill-like forms grew lower and broader\neven as we stared.\n\nMoved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I\nperceived a third of these cloudy black kopjes had risen.\n\nEverything had suddenly become very still.  Far away to the\nsoutheast, marking the quiet, we heard the Martians hooting to one\nanother, and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of\ntheir guns.  But the earthly artillery made no reply.\n\nNow at the time we could not understand these things, but later I\nwas to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the\ntwilight.  Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have\ndescribed, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a\nhuge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other\npossible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him.  Some fired\nonly one of these, some two--as in the case of the one we had seen;\nthe one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at\nthat time.  These canisters smashed on striking the ground--they did\nnot explode--and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy,\ninky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus\ncloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the\nsurrounding country.  And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of\nits pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.\n\nIt was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that,\nafter the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact, it sank\ndown through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather\nliquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the\nvalleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the\ncarbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do.  And\nwhere it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the\nsurface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank\nslowly and made way for more.  The scum was absolutely insoluble, and\nit is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one\ncould drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained.\nThe vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do.  It hung together\nin banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving\nreluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist\nand moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust.\nSave that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue\nof the spectrum is concerned, we are still entirely ignorant of the\nnature of this substance.\n\nOnce the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the black\nsmoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its precipitation,\nthat fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high\nhouses and on great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison\naltogether, as was proved even that night at Street Cobham and Ditton.\n\nThe man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of\nthe strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from the\nchurch spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out\nof its inky nothingness.  For a day and a half he remained there,\nweary, starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue sky and\nagainst the prospect of the distant hills a velvet-black expanse, with\nred roofs, green trees, and, later, black-veiled shrubs and gates,\nbarns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight.\n\nBut that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed\nto remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground.  As a rule\nthe Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it\nagain by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it.\n\nThis they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the\nstarlight from the window of a deserted house at Upper Halliford,\nwhither we had returned.  From there we could see the searchlights on\nRichmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the\nwindows rattled, and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that\nhad been put in position there.  These continued intermittently for\nthe space of a quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the\ninvisible Martians at Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of\nthe electric light vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow.\n\nThen the fourth cylinder fell--a brilliant green meteor--as I\nlearned afterwards, in Bushey Park.  Before the guns on the Richmond\nand Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far\naway in the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard\nbefore the black vapour could overwhelm the gunners.\n\nSo, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a\nwasps' nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the\nLondonward country.  The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart,\nuntil at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden.\nAll night through their destructive tubes advanced.  Never once, after\nthe Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give the\nartillery the ghost of a chance against them.  Wherever there was a\npossibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of\nthe black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly\ndisplayed the Heat-Ray was brought to bear.\n\nBy midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and\nthe glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black\nsmoke, blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as\nfar as the eye could reach.  And through this two Martians slowly\nwaded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that.\n\nThey were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they\nhad but a limited supply of material for its production or because\nthey did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe\nthe opposition they had aroused.  In the latter aim they certainly\nsucceeded.  Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to\ntheir movements.  After that no body of men would stand against them,\nso hopeless was the enterprise.  Even the crews of the torpedo-boats\nand destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames\nrefused to stop, mutinied, and went down again.  The only offensive\noperation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of\nmines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and\nspasmodic.\n\nOne has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries\ntowards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight.  Survivors there\nwere none.  One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers\nalert and watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand,\nthe limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of\ncivilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the\nevening stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned\nand wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the\nMartians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and\nhouses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields.\n\nOne may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the\nswiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing\nheadlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable\ndarkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon\nits victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking,\nfalling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men\nchoking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of\nthe opaque cone of smoke.  And then night and extinction--nothing but\na silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.\n\nBefore dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of\nRichmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a\nlast expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the\nnecessity of flight.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\nTHE EXODUS FROM LONDON\n\n\nSo you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the\ngreatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning--the stream of\nflight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round\nthe railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the\nshipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel\nnorthward and eastward.  By ten o'clock the police organisation, and\nby midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency,\nlosing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in\nthat swift liquefaction of the social body.\n\nAll the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern\npeople at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and\ntrains were being filled.  People were fighting savagely for\nstanding-room in the carriages even at two o'clock.  By three, people\nwere being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple\nof hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were\nfired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct\nthe traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the\npeople they were called out to protect.\n\nAnd as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused\nto return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an\never-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the\nnorthward-running roads.  By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes,\nand a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and\nacross the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges\nin its sluggish advance.  Another bank drove over Ealing, and\nsurrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but\nunable to escape.\n\nAfter a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at\nChalk Farm--the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods\nyard there _ploughed_ through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men\nfought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his\nfurnace--my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across\nthrough a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost\nin the sack of a cycle shop.  The front tire of the machine he got was\npunctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off,\nnotwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist.  The steep\nfoot of Haverstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned\nhorses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.\n\nSo he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware\nRoad, reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead\nof the crowd.  Along the road people were standing in the roadway,\ncurious, wondering.  He was passed by a number of cyclists, some\nhorsemen, and two motor cars.  A mile from Edgware the rim of the\nwheel broke, and the machine became unridable.  He left it by the\nroadside and trudged through the village.  There were shops half\nopened in the main street of the place, and people crowded on the\npavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this\nextraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning.  He\nsucceeded in getting some food at an inn.\n\nFor a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do.  The\nflying people increased in number.  Many of them, like my brother,\nseemed inclined to loiter in the place.  There was no fresh news of\nthe invaders from Mars.\n\nAt that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested.\nMost of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there\nwere soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and\nthe dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.\n\nIt was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where\nsome friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike\ninto a quiet lane running eastward.  Presently he came upon a stile,\nand, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward.  He passed near\nseveral farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not\nlearn.  He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High\nBarnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers.\nHe came upon them just in time to save them.\n\nHe heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a\ncouple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in\nwhich they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the\nfrightened pony's head.  One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in\nwhite, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure,\nslashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her\ndisengaged hand.\n\nMy brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried\ntowards the struggle.  One of the men desisted and turned towards him,\nand my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was\nunavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and\nsent him down against the wheel of the chaise.\n\nIt was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him\nquiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the\nslender lady's arm.  He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung\nacross his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and\nthe man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in\nthe direction from which he had come.\n\nPartly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the\nhorse's head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down\nthe lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking\nback.  The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he\nstopped him with a blow in the face.  Then, realising that he was\ndeserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise,\nwith the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned\nnow, following remotely.\n\nSuddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong,\nand he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists\nagain.  He would have had little chance against them had not the\nslender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help.  It\nseems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the\nseat when she and her companion were attacked.  She fired at six\nyards' distance, narrowly missing my brother.  The less courageous of\nthe robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his\ncowardice.  They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third\nman lay insensible.\n\n\"Take this!\" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her\nrevolver.\n\n\"Go back to the chaise,\" said my brother, wiping the blood from his\nsplit lip.\n\nShe turned without a word--they were both panting--and they went\nback to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened\npony.\n\nThe robbers had evidently had enough of it.  When my brother looked\nagain they were retreating.\n\n\"I'll sit here,\" said my brother, \"if I may\"; and he got upon the\nempty front seat.  The lady looked over her shoulder.\n\n\"Give me the reins,\" she said, and laid the whip along the pony's\nside.  In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my\nbrother's eyes.\n\nSo, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a\ncut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an\nunknown lane with these two women.\n\nHe learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon\nliving at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous\ncase at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the\nMartian advance.  He had hurried home, roused the women--their servant\nhad left them two days before--packed some provisions, put his\nrevolver under the seat--luckily for my brother--and told them to\ndrive on to Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there.  He\nstopped behind to tell the neighbours.  He would overtake them, he\nsaid, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly\nnine and they had seen nothing of him.  They could not stop in Edgware\nbecause of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come\ninto this side lane.\n\nThat was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently\nthey stopped again, nearer to New Barnet.  He promised to stay with\nthem, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the\nmissing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the\nrevolver--a weapon strange to him--in order to give them confidence.\n\nThey made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became\nhappy in the hedge.  He told them of his own escape out of London, and\nall that he knew of these Martians and their ways.  The sun crept\nhigher in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place\nto an uneasy state of anticipation.  Several wayfarers came along the\nlane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could.  Every\nbroken answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster\nthat had come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate\nnecessity for prosecuting this flight.  He urged the matter upon them.\n\n\"We have money,\" said the slender woman, and hesitated.\n\nHer eyes met my brother's, and her hesitation ended.\n\n\"So have I,\" said my brother.\n\nShe explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold,\nbesides a five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get\nupon a train at St. Albans or New Barnet.  My brother thought that was\nhopeless, seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains,\nand broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and\nthence escaping from the country altogether.\n\nMrs. Elphinstone--that was the name of the woman in white--would\nlisten to no reasoning, and kept calling upon \"George\"; but her\nsister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last\nagreed to my brother's suggestion.  So, designing to cross the Great\nNorth Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony\nto save it as much as possible.  As the sun crept up the sky the day\nbecame excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew\nburning and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly.  The\nhedges were grey with dust.  And as they advanced towards Barnet a\ntumultuous murmuring grew stronger.\n\nThey began to meet more people.  For the most part these were\nstaring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard,\nunclean.  One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on\nthe ground.  They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one\nhand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things.  His\nparoxysm of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.\n\nAs my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south\nof Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on\ntheir left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then\npassed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a\nsmall portmanteau in the other.  Then round the corner of the lane,\nfrom between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the\nhigh road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and\ndriven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust.  There were\nthree girls, East End factory girls, and a couple of little children\ncrowded in the cart.\n\n\"This'll tike us rahnd Edgware?\" asked the driver, wild-eyed,\nwhite-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the\nleft, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.\n\nMy brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the\nhouses in front of them, and veiling the white facade of a terrace\nbeyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas.  Mrs.\nElphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red\nflame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot,\nblue sky.  The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the\ndisorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the\ncreaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs.  The lane came round\nsharply not fifty yards from the crossroads.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Mrs. Elphinstone.  \"What is this you are\ndriving us into?\"\n\nMy brother stopped.\n\nFor the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of\nhuman beings rushing northward, one pressing on another.  A great bank\nof dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything\nwithin twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was\nperpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses\nand of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every\ndescription.\n\n\"Way!\" my brother heard voices crying.  \"Make way!\"\n\nIt was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting\npoint of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust\nwas hot and pungent.  And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa\nwas burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road\nto add to the confusion.\n\nTwo men came past them.  Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy\nbundle and weeping.  A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue,\ncircled dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my\nbrother's threat.\n\nSo much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses\nto the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent\nin between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded\nforms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner,\nhurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding\nmultitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust.\n\n\"Go on!  Go on!\" cried the voices.  \"Way!  Way!\"\n\nOne man's hands pressed on the back of another.  My brother stood\nat the pony's head.  Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace\nby pace, down the lane.\n\nEdgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a riotous tumult,\nbut this was a whole population in movement.  It is hard to imagine\nthat host.  It had no character of its own.  The figures poured out\npast the corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the\nlane.  Along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the\nwheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another.\n\nThe carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making\nlittle way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted\nforward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing\nso, sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the\nvillas.\n\n\"Push on!\" was the cry.  \"Push on!  They are coming!\"\n\nIn one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army,\ngesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, \"Eternity!\nEternity!\"  His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother\ncould hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust.  Some of\nthe people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses\nand quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at\nnothing with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or\nlay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances.  The horses' bits\nwere covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot.\n\nThere were cabs, carriages, shop cars, waggons, beyond counting; a\nmail cart, a road-cleaner's cart marked \"Vestry of St. Pancras,\" a\nhuge timber waggon crowded with roughs.  A brewer's dray rumbled by\nwith its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood.\n\n\"Clear the way!\" cried the voices.  \"Clear the way!\"\n\n\"Eter-nity!  Eter-nity!\" came echoing down the road.\n\nThere were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with\nchildren that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in\ndust, their weary faces smeared with tears.  With many of these came\nmen, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage.  Fighting side\nby side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black\nrags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed.  There were sturdy\nworkmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like\nclerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my\nbrother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one\nwretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.\n\nBut varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had\nin common.  There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind\nthem.  A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent\nthe whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and\nbroken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into\nrenewed activity.  The heat and dust had already been at work upon\nthis multitude.  Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked.\nThey were all thirsty, weary, and footsore.  And amid the various\ncries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue;\nthe voices of most of them were hoarse and weak.  Through it all ran a\nrefrain:\n\n\"Way!  Way!  The Martians are coming!\"\n\nFew stopped and came aside from that flood.  The lane opened\nslantingly into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a\ndelusive appearance of coming from the direction of London.  Yet a\nkind of eddy of people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of\nthe stream, who for the most part rested but a moment before plunging\ninto it again.  A little way down the lane, with two friends bending\nover him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags.\nHe was a lucky man to have friends.\n\nA little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black\nfrock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his\nboot--his sock was blood-stained--shook out a pebble, and hobbled on\nagain; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw\nherself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping.\n\n\"I can't go on!  I can't go on!\"\n\nMy brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up,\nspeaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone.  So soon\nas my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened.\n\n\"Ellen!\" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her\nvoice--\"Ellen!\"  And the child suddenly darted away from my brother,\ncrying \"Mother!\"\n\n\"They are coming,\" said a man on horseback, riding past along the\nlane.\n\n\"Out of the way, there!\" bawled a coachman, towering high; and my\nbrother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane.\n\nThe people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse.  My\nbrother pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge, and the man\ndrove by and stopped at the turn of the way.  It was a carriage, with\na pole for a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces.  My\nbrother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something\non a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet\nhedge.\n\nOne of the men came running to my brother.\n\n\"Where is there any water?\" he said.  \"He is dying fast, and very\nthirsty.  It is Lord Garrick.\"\n\n\"Lord Garrick!\" said my brother; \"the Chief Justice?\"\n\n\"The water?\" he said.\n\n\"There may be a tap,\" said my brother, \"in some of the houses.  We\nhave no water.  I dare not leave my people.\"\n\nThe man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner\nhouse.\n\n\"Go on!\" said the people, thrusting at him.  \"They are coming!  Go\non!\"\n\nThen my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced\nman lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother's\neyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to\nbreak up into separate coins as it struck the ground.  They rolled\nhither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses.  The\nman stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab\nstruck his shoulder and sent him reeling.  He gave a shriek and dodged\nback, and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly.\n\n\"Way!\" cried the men all about him.  \"Make way!\"\n\nSo soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands\nopen, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his\npocket.  A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half\nrising, he had been borne down under the horse's hoofs.\n\n\"Stop!\" screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way,\ntried to clutch the bit of the horse.\n\nBefore he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and\nsaw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back.  The\ndriver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round\nbehind the cart.  The multitudinous shouting confused his ears.  The\nman was writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to\nrise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp\nand dead.  My brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a\nman on a black horse came to his assistance.\n\n\"Get him out of the road,\" said he; and, clutching the man's collar\nwith his free hand, my brother lugged him sideways.  But he still\nclutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering\nat his arm with a handful of gold.  \"Go on!  Go on!\" shouted angry\nvoices behind.\n\n\"Way!  Way!\"\n\nThere was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart\nthat the man on horseback stopped.  My brother looked up, and the man\nwith the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his\ncollar.  There was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering\nsideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it.  A hoof missed my\nbrother's foot by a hair's breadth.  He released his grip on the\nfallen man and jumped back.  He saw anger change to terror on the face\nof the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and my\nbrother was borne backward and carried past the entrance of the lane,\nand had to fight hard in the torrent to recover it.\n\nHe saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with\nall a child's want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated\neyes at a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed\nunder the rolling wheels.  \"Let us go back!\" he shouted, and began\nturning the pony round. \"We cannot cross this--hell,\" he said and they\nwent back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting\ncrowd was hidden.  As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw\nthe face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white\nand drawn, and shining with perspiration.  The two women sat silent,\ncrouching in their seat and shivering.\n\nThen beyond the bend my brother stopped again.  Miss Elphinstone\nwas white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched\neven to call upon \"George.\"  My brother was horrified and perplexed.\nSo soon as they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable\nit was to attempt this crossing.  He turned to Miss Elphinstone,\nsuddenly resolute.\n\n\"We must go that way,\" he said, and led the pony round again.\n\nFor the second time that day this girl proved her quality.  To force\ntheir way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the\ntraffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its\nhead.  A waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter\nfrom the chaise.  In another moment they were caught and swept forward\nby the stream.  My brother, with the cabman's whip marks red across\nhis face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from\nher.\n\n\"Point the revolver at the man behind,\" he said, giving it to her,\n\"if he presses us too hard.  No!--point it at his horse.\"\n\nThen he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right\nacross the road.  But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition,\nto become a part of that dusty rout.  They swept through Chipping\nBarnet with the torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of\nthe town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the\nway.  It was din and confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the\ntown the road forks repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the\nstress.\n\nThey struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of\nthe road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great\nmultitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at\nthe water.  And farther on, from a lull near East Barnet, they saw\ntwo trains running slowly one after the other without signal or\norder--trains swarming with people, with men even among the coals\nbehind the engines--going northward along the Great Northern Railway.\nMy brother supposes they must have filled outside London, for at that\ntime the furious terror of the people had rendered the central\ntermini impossible.\n\nNear this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the\nviolence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them.\nThey began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and\nnone of them dared to sleep.  And in the evening many people came\nhurrying along the road nearby their stopping place, fleeing from\nunknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my\nbrother had come.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\nTHE \"THUNDER CHILD\"\n\n\nHad the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday\nhave annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself\nslowly through the home counties.  Not only along the road through\nBarnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the\nroads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames\nto Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout.  If one could\nhave hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above\nLondon every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled\nmaze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming\nfugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress.  I\nhave set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of\nthe road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise\nhow that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned.\nNever before in the history of the world had such a mass of human\nbeings moved and suffered together.  The legendary hosts of Goths and\nHuns, the hugest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop\nin that current.  And this was no disciplined march; it was a\nstampede--a stampede gigantic and terrible--without order and without\na goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving\nheadlong.  It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the\nmassacre of mankind.\n\nDirectly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of\nstreets far and wide, houses, churches, squares, crescents,\ngardens--already derelict--spread out like a huge map, and in the\nsouthward _blotted_.  Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would\nhave seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart.\nSteadily, incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out\nramifications this way and that, now banking itself against rising\nground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a new-found valley,\nexactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper.\n\nAnd beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river,\nthe glittering Martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically\nspreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over\nthat, laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its\npurpose, and taking possession of the conquered country.  They do not\nseem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete\ndemoralisation and the destruction of any opposition.  They exploded\nany stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked\nthe railways here and there.  They were hamstringing mankind.  They\nseemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations, and did\nnot come beyond the central part of London all that day.  It is\npossible that a very considerable number of people in London stuck to\ntheir houses through Monday morning.  Certain it is that many died at\nhome suffocated by the Black Smoke.\n\nUntil about midday the Pool of London was an astonishing scene.\nSteamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the\nenormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many\nwho swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and\ndrowned.  About one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a\ncloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars\nBridge.  At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting,\nand collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges\njammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and\nlightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon\nthem from the riverfront.  People were actually clambering down the\npiers of the bridge from above.\n\nWhen, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and\nwaded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse.\n\nOf the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell.  The\nsixth star fell at Wimbledon.  My brother, keeping watch beside the\nwomen in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond\nthe hills.  On Tuesday the little party, still set upon getting across\nthe sea, made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester.\nThe news that the Martians were now in possession of the whole of\nLondon was confirmed.  They had been seen at Highgate, and even, it\nwas said, at Neasden.  But they did not come into my brother's view\nuntil the morrow.\n\nThat day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need\nof provisions.  As they grew hungry the rights of property ceased to\nbe regarded.  Farmers were out to defend their cattle-sheds,\ngranaries, and ripening root crops with arms in their hands.  A number\nof people now, like my brother, had their faces eastward, and there\nwere some desperate souls even going back towards London to get food.\nThese were chiefly people from the northern suburbs, whose knowledge\nof the Black Smoke came by hearsay.  He heard that about half the\nmembers of the government had gathered at Birmingham, and that\nenormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used\nin automatic mines across the Midland counties.\n\nHe was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the\ndesertions of the first day's panic, had resumed traffic, and was\nrunning northward trains from St. Albans to relieve the congestion of\nthe home counties.  There was also a placard in Chipping Ongar\nannouncing that large stores of flour were available in the northern\ntowns and that within twenty-four hours bread would be distributed\namong the starving people in the neighbourhood.  But this intelligence\ndid not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed, and the three\npressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution\nthan this promise.  Nor, as a matter of fact, did anyone else hear\nmore of it.  That night fell the seventh star, falling upon Primrose\nHill.  It fell while Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that\nduty alternately with my brother.  She saw it.\n\nOn Wednesday the three fugitives--they had passed the night in a\nfield of unripe wheat--reached Chelmsford, and there a body of the\ninhabitants, calling itself the Committee of Public Supply, seized the\npony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the\npromise of a share in it the next day.  Here there were rumours of\nMartians at Epping, and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey\nPowder Mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders.\n\nPeople were watching for Martians here from the church towers.  My\nbrother, very luckily for him as it chanced, preferred to push on at\nonce to the coast rather than wait for food, although all three of\nthem were very hungry.  By midday they passed through Tillingham,\nwhich, strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent and deserted, save\nfor a few furtive plunderers hunting for food.  Near Tillingham they\nsuddenly came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of\nshipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine.\n\nFor after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came\non to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and\nafterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people.  They\nlay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last\ntowards the Naze.  Close inshore was a multitude of fishing\nsmacks--English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches\nfrom the Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large\nburden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships,\npassenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport\neven, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and\nalong the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out\ndimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach,\na swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.\n\nAbout a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water,\nalmost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship.  This\nwas the ram _Thunder Child_.  It was the only warship in sight, but far\naway to the right over the smooth surface of the sea--for that day\nthere was a dead calm--lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next\nironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line,\nsteam up and ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the\ncourse of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent\nit.\n\nAt the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the\nassurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic.  She had never\nbeen out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself\nfriendless in a foreign country, and so forth.  She seemed, poor woman,\nto imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar.\nShe had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed\nduring the two days' journeyings.  Her great idea was to return to\nStanmore.  Things had been always well and safe at Stanmore.  They\nwould find George at Stanmore.\n\nIt was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the\nbeach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the\nattention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames.  They sent\na boat and drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three.  The\nsteamer was going, these men said, to Ostend.\n\nIt was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares\nat the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his\ncharges.  There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the\nthree of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.\n\nThere were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of\nwhom had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the\ncaptain lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up\npassengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded.  He\nwould probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of\nguns that began about that hour in the south.  As if in answer, the\nironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags.  A\njet of smoke sprang out of her funnels.\n\nSome of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from\nShoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder.  At the\nsame time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three\nironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of\nblack smoke.  But my brother's attention speedily reverted to the\ndistant firing in the south.  He fancied he saw a column of smoke\nrising out of the distant grey haze.\n\nThe little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big\ncrescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and\nhazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance,\nadvancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness.  At\nthat the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear\nand anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his\nterror.  Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of\nthe steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or\nchurch towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human\nstride.\n\nIt was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more\namazed than terrified, watching this Titan advancing deliberately\ntowards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the\ncoast fell away.  Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another,\nstriding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther\noff, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway\nup between sea and sky.  They were all stalking seaward, as if to\nintercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded\nbetween Foulness and the Naze.  In spite of the throbbing exertions of\nthe engines of the little paddle-boat, and the pouring foam that her\nwheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying slowness from\nthis ominous advance.\n\nGlancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of\nshipping already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship\npassing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on,\nsteamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let\nout, launches rushing hither and thither.  He was so fascinated by\nthis and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes\nfor anything seaward.  And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she\nhad suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong\nfrom the seat upon which he was standing.  There was a shouting all\nabout him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered\nfaintly.  The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands.\n\nHe sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards\nfrom their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade of\na plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge\nwaves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles\nhelplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the\nwaterline.\n\nA douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment.  When his eyes\nwere clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing\nlandward.  Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure,\nand from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot\nwith fire.  It was the torpedo ram, _Thunder Child_, steaming headlong,\ncoming to the rescue of the threatened shipping.\n\nKeeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks,\nmy brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again,\nand he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far\nout to sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged.\nThus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less\nformidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was\npitching so helplessly.  It would seem they were regarding this new\nantagonist with astonishment.  To their intelligence, it may be, the\ngiant was even such another as themselves.  The _Thunder Child_ fired no\ngun, but simply drove full speed towards them.  It was probably her\nnot firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did.  They\ndid not know what to make of her.  One shell, and they would have sent\nher to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray.\n\nShe was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway\nbetween the steamboat and the Martians--a diminishing black bulk\nagainst the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast.\n\nSuddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a\ncanister of the black gas at the ironclad.  It hit her larboard side\nand glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an\nunfolding torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear.\nTo the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in\ntheir eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians.\n\nThey saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water\nas they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like\ngenerator of the Heat-Ray.  He held it pointing obliquely downward,\nand a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch.  It must have\ndriven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod\nthrough paper.\n\nA flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the\nMartian reeled and staggered.  In another moment he was cut down, and\na great body of water and steam shot high in the air.  The guns of the\n_Thunder Child_ sounded through the reek, going off one after the other,\nand one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer, ricocheted\ntowards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a smack to\nmatchwood.\n\nBut no one heeded that very much.  At the sight of the Martian's\ncollapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all the\ncrowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together.  And then\nthey yelled again.  For, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove\nsomething long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts,\nits ventilators and funnels spouting fire.\n\nShe was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and\nher engines working.  She headed straight for a second Martian, and\nwas within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear.  Then\nwith a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped\nupward.  The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and\nin another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the\nimpetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing\nof cardboard.  My brother shouted involuntarily.  A boiling tumult of\nsteam hid everything again.\n\n\"Two!\" yelled the captain.\n\nEveryone was shouting.  The whole steamer from end to end rang with\nfrantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the\ncrowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea.\n\nThe steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third\nMartian and the coast altogether.  And all this time the boat was\npaddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last\nthe confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened,\nand nothing of the _Thunder Child_ could be made out, nor could the\nthird Martian be seen.  But the ironclads to seaward were now quite\nclose and standing in towards shore past the steamboat.\n\nThe little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the\nironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still by\na marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and\ncombining in the strangest way.  The fleet of refugees was scattering\nto the northeast; several smacks were sailing between the ironclads\nand the steamboat.  After a time, and before they reached the sinking\ncloud bank, the warships turned northward, and then abruptly went\nabout and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward.  The\ncoast grew faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of\nclouds that were gathering about the sinking sun.\n\nThen suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the\nvibration of guns, and a form of black shadows moving.  Everyone\nstruggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding\nfurnace of the west, but nothing was to be distinguished clearly.  A\nmass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun.  The\nsteamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense.\n\nThe sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the\nevening star trembled into sight.  It was deep twilight when the\ncaptain cried out and pointed.  My brother strained his eyes.\nSomething rushed up into the sky out of the greyness--rushed\nslantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above\nthe clouds in the western sky; something flat and broad, and very\nlarge, that swept round in a vast curve, grew smaller, sank slowly,\nand vanished again into the grey mystery of the night.  And as it flew\nit rained down darkness upon the land.\n\n\n\nBOOK TWO\n\nTHE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS\n\n\n\nCHAPTER ONE\n\nUNDER FOOT\n\n\nIn the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to\ntell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two\nchapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at\nHalliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke.  There I will\nresume.  We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day--the\nday of the panic--in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black\nSmoke from the rest of the world.  We could do nothing but wait in\naching inactivity during those two weary days.\n\nMy mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife.  I figured her at\nLeatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man.\nI paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off\nfrom her, of all that might happen to her in my absence.  My cousin I\nknew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of\nman to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly.  What was needed now\nwas not bravery, but circumspection.  My only consolation was to\nbelieve that the Martians were moving London-ward and away from her.\nSuch vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful.  I grew very\nweary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I tired\nof the sight of his selfish despair.  After some ineffectual\nremonstrance I kept away from him, staying in a room--evidently a\nchildren's schoolroom--containing globes, forms, and copybooks.  When\nhe followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house\nand, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.\n\nWe were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and\nthe morning of the next.  There were signs of people in the next house\non Sunday evening--a face at a window and moving lights, and later the\nslamming of a door.  But I do not know who these people were, nor what\nbecame of them.  We saw nothing of them next day.  The Black Smoke\ndrifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer\nand nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house\nthat hid us.\n\nA Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff\nwith a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed\nall the windows it touched, and scalded the curate's hand as he fled\nout of the front room.  When at last we crept across the sodden rooms\nand looked out again, the country northward was as though a black\nsnowstorm had passed over it.  Looking towards the river, we were\nastonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of\nthe scorched meadows.\n\nFor a time we did not see how this change affected our position,\nsave that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke.  But later\nI perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get\naway.  So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream\nof action returned.  But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable.\n\n\"We are safe here,\" he repeated; \"safe here.\"\n\nI resolved to leave him--would that I had!  Wiser now for the\nartilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and drink.  I had found oil\nand rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that\nI found in one of the bedrooms.  When it was clear to him that I meant\nto go alone--had reconciled myself to going alone--he suddenly roused\nhimself to come.  And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we\nstarted about five o'clock, as I should judge, along the blackened\nroad to Sunbury.\n\nIn Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying\nin contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and\nluggage, all covered thickly with black dust.  That pall of cindery\npowder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.\nWe got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of\nstrange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were\nrelieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating\ndrift.  We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro\nunder the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance\ntowards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham.  These were the first\npeople we saw.\n\nAway across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still\nafire.  Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke,\nand there were more people about here, though none could give us news.\nFor the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull\nto shift their quarters.  I have an impression that many of the houses\nhere were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even\nfor flight.  Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along\nthe road.  I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap,\npounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts.  We crossed\nRichmond Bridge about half past eight.  We hurried across the exposed\nbridge, of course, but I noticed floating down the stream a number\nof red masses, some many feet across.  I did not know what these\nwere--there was no time for scrutiny--and I put a more horrible\ninterpretation on them than they deserved.  Here again on the Surrey\nside were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies--a heap\nnear the approach to the station; but we had no glimpse of the\nMartians until we were some way towards Barnes.\n\nWe saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running\ndown a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed\ndeserted.  Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the\ntown of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke.\n\nThen suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people\nrunning, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in\nsight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us.  We stood\naghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must\nimmediately have perished.  We were so terrified that we dared not go\non, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden.  There the curate\ncrouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again.\n\nBut my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest,\nand in the twilight I ventured out again.  I went through a shrubbery,\nand along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds,\nand so emerged upon the road towards Kew.  The curate I left in the\nshed, but he came hurrying after me.\n\nThat second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did.  For it\nwas manifest the Martians were about us.  No sooner had the curate\novertaken me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen\nbefore or another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew\nLodge.  Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the\ngreen-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian\npursued them.  In three strides he was among them, and they ran\nradiating from his feet in all directions.  He used no Heat-Ray to\ndestroy them, but picked them up one by one.  Apparently he tossed\nthem into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much\nas a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder.\n\nIt was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any\nother purpose than destruction with defeated humanity.  We stood for a\nmoment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a\nwalled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and\nlay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were\nout.\n\nI suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage\nto start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along\nhedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the\ndarkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who\nseemed to be all about us.  In one place we blundered upon a scorched\nand blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered\ndead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but\nwith their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty\nfeet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun\ncarriages.\n\nSheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent\nand deserted.  Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too\ndark for us to see into the side roads of the place.  In Sheen my\ncompanion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided\nto try one of the houses.\n\nThe first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the\nwindow, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable\nleft in the place but some mouldy cheese.  There was, however, water\nto drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our\nnext house-breaking.\n\nWe then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake.\nHere there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the\npantry of this domicile we found a store of food--two loaves of bread\nin a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham.  I give this\ncatalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to\nsubsist upon this store for the next fortnight.  Bottled beer stood\nunder a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp\nlettuces.  This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in\nthis was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly\na dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of\nbiscuits.\n\nWe sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike\na light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle.\nThe curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly\nenough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength\nby eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us.\n\n\"It can't be midnight yet,\" I said, and then came a blinding glare\nof vivid green light.  Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly\nvisible in green and black, and vanished again.  And then followed such\na concussion as I have never heard before or since.  So close on the\nheels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash\nof glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the\nplaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of\nfragments upon our heads.  I was knocked headlong across the floor\nagainst the oven handle and stunned.  I was insensible for a long\ntime, the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness\nagain, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from\na cut forehead, was dabbing water over me.\n\nFor some time I could not recollect what had happened.  Then things\ncame to me slowly.  A bruise on my temple asserted itself.\n\n\"Are you better?\" asked the curate in a whisper.\n\nAt last I answered him.  I sat up.\n\n\"Don't move,\" he said.  \"The floor is covered with smashed crockery\nfrom the dresser.  You can't possibly move without making a noise, and\nI fancy _they_ are outside.\"\n\nWe both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other\nbreathing.  Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near\nus, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.\nOutside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.\n\n\"That!\" said the curate, when presently it happened again.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.  \"But what is it?\"\n\n\"A Martian!\" said the curate.\n\nI listened again.\n\n\"It was not like the Heat-Ray,\" I said, and for a time I was\ninclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled\nagainst the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of\nShepperton Church.\n\nOur situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or\nfour hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved.  And then the light\nfiltered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through\na triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in\nthe wall behind us.  The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for\nthe first time.\n\nThe window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which\nflowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our\nfeet.  Outside, the soil was banked high against the house.  At the\ntop of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe.  The floor\nwas littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the\nhouse was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was\nevident the greater part of the house had collapsed.  Contrasting\nvividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion,\npale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the\nwallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured\nsupplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range.\n\nAs the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the\nbody of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still\nglowing cylinder.  At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as\npossible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the\nscullery.\n\nAbruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.\n\n\"The fifth cylinder,\" I whispered, \"the fifth shot from Mars, has\nstruck this house and buried us under the ruins!\"\n\nFor a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:\n\n\"God have mercy upon us!\"\n\nI heard him presently whimpering to himself.\n\nSave for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my\npart scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint\nlight of the kitchen door.  I could just see the curate's face, a dim,\noval shape, and his collar and cuffs.  Outside there began a metallic\nhammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet\ninterval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine.  These noises, for\nthe most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if\nanything to increase in number as time wore on.  Presently a measured\nthudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the\nvessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued.  Once the\nlight was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely\ndark.  For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and\nshivering, until our tired attention failed. . . .\n\nAt last I found myself awake and very hungry.  I am inclined to\nbelieve we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that\nawakening.  My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to\naction.  I told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way\ntowards the pantry.  He made me no answer, but so soon as I began\neating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling\nafter me.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TWO\n\nWHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE\n\n\nAfter eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have\ndozed again, for when presently I looked round I was alone.  The\nthudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence.  I whispered\nfor the curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of\nthe kitchen.  It was still daylight, and I perceived him across the\nroom, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the\nMartians.  His shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden\nfrom me.\n\nI could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine\nshed; and the place rocked with that beating thud.  Through the\naperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold\nand the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky.  For a minute or so I\nremained watching the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and\nstepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered the\nfloor.\n\nI touched the curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass\nof plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact.  I\ngripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we\ncrouched motionless.  Then I turned to see how much of our rampart\nremained.  The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open\nin the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was\nable to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet\nsuburban roadway.  Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.\n\nThe fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the\nhouse we had first visited.  The building had vanished, completely\nsmashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow.  The cylinder lay now\nfar beneath the original foundations--deep in a hole, already vastly\nlarger than the pit I had looked into at Woking.  The earth all round\nit had splashed under that tremendous impact--\"splashed\" is the only\nword--and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent\nhouses.  It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a\nhammer.  Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on\nthe ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the\nkitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and\nruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the\ncylinder.  Over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great\ncircular pit the Martians were engaged in making.  The heavy beating\nsound was evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright green\nvapour drove up like a veil across our peephole.\n\nThe cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on\nthe farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped\nshrubbery, one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its\noccupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky.  At first I\nscarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been\nconvenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary\nglittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation, and on account of\nthe strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across\nthe heaped mould near it.\n\nThe mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first.  It\nwas one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called\nhandling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an\nenormous impetus to terrestrial invention.  As it dawned upon me\nfirst, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed,\nagile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars,\nand reaching and clutching tentacles about its body.  Most of its\narms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing\nout a number of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and\napparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder.  These, as it\nextracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface\nof earth behind it.\n\nIts motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did\nnot see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter.  The\nfighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary\npitch, but nothing to compare with this.  People who have never seen\nthese structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or\nthe imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon,\nscarcely realise that living quality.\n\nI recall particularly the illustration of one of the first\npamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war.  The artist had\nevidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and\nthere his knowledge ended.  He presented them as tilted, stiff\ntripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an\naltogether misleading monotony of effect.  The pamphlet containing\nthese renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here\nsimply to warn the reader against the impression they may have\ncreated.  They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a\nDutch doll is like a human being.  To my mind, the pamphlet would have\nbeen much better without them.\n\nAt first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a\nmachine, but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the\ncontrolling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements\nseeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion.\nBut then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny,\nleathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and\nthe true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me.  With that\nrealisation my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real\nMartians.  Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the\nfirst nausea no longer obscured my observation.  Moreover, I was\nconcealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action.\n\nThey were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible\nto conceive.  They were huge round bodies--or, rather, heads--about\nfour feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face.  This\nface had no nostrils--indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any\nsense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes,\nand just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak.  In the back of this head\nor body--I scarcely know how to speak of it--was the single tight\ntympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it\nmust have been almost useless in our dense air.  In a group round the\nmouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two\nbunches of eight each.  These bunches have since been named rather\naptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the _hands_.\nEven as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be\nendeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with\nthe increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible.\nThere is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon\nthem with some facility.\n\nThe internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since\nshown, was almost equally simple.  The greater part of the structure\nwas the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile\ntentacles.  Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth\nopened, and the heart and its vessels.  The pulmonary distress caused\nby the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only\ntoo evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin.\n\nAnd this was the sum of the Martian organs.  Strange as it may seem\nto a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes\nup the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians.  They were\nheads--merely heads.  Entrails they had none.  They did not eat, much\nless digest.  Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other\ncreatures, and _injected_ it into their own veins.  I have myself seen\nthis being done, as I shall mention in its place.  But, squeamish as I\nmay seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure\neven to continue watching.  Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from\na still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run\ndirectly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . .\n\nThe bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at\nthe same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our\ncarnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.\n\nThe physiological advantages of the practice of injection are\nundeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and\nenergy occasioned by eating and the digestive process.  Our bodies are\nhalf made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning\nheterogeneous food into blood.  The digestive processes and their\nreaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our\nminds.  Men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy\nlivers, or sound gastric glands.  But the Martians were lifted above\nall these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion.\n\nTheir undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment\nis partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they\nhad brought with them as provisions from Mars.  These creatures, to\njudge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands,\nwere bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the\nsilicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet\nhigh and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets.\nTwo or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and\nall were killed before earth was reached.  It was just as well for\nthem, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have\nbroken every bone in their bodies.\n\nAnd while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place\ncertain further details which, although they were not all evident to\nus at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them\nto form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures.\n\nIn three other points their physiology differed strangely from\nours.  Their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man\nsleeps.  Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate,\nthat periodical extinction was unknown to them.  They had little or\nno sense of fatigue, it would seem.  On earth they could never have\nmoved without effort, yet even to the last they kept in action.  In\ntwenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth\nis perhaps the case with the ants.\n\nIn the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the\nMartians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the\ntumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men.  A\nyoung Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth\nduring the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially\n_budded_ off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals\nin the fresh-water polyp.\n\nIn man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of\nincrease has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly the\nprimitive method.  Among the lower animals, up even to those first\ncousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes\noccur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its\ncompetitor altogether.  On Mars, however, just the reverse has\napparently been the case.\n\nIt is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of\nquasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did\nforecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian\ncondition.  His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or\nDecember, 1893, in a long-defunct publication, the _Pall Mall Budget_,\nand I recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called\n_Punch_.  He pointed out--writing in a foolish, facetious tone--that the\nperfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs;\nthe perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as\nhair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential\nparts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection\nwould lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the\ncoming ages.  The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity.  Only one\nother part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was\nthe hand, \"teacher and agent of the brain.\"  While the rest of the\nbody dwindled, the hands would grow larger.\n\nThere is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians\nwe have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression\nof the animal side of the organism by the intelligence.  To me it is\nquite credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not\nunlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the\nlatter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last)\nat the expense of the rest of the body.  Without the body the brain\nwould, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of\nthe emotional substratum of the human being.\n\nThe last salient point in which the systems of these creatures\ndiffered from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial\nparticular.  Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on\nearth, have either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary\nscience eliminated them ages ago.  A hundred diseases, all the fevers\nand contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such\nmorbidities, never enter the scheme of their life.  And speaking of\nthe differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may\nallude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed.\n\nApparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green\nfor a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint.  At any rate, the\nseeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with\nthem gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths.  Only that known\npopularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition\nwith terrestrial forms.  The red creeper was quite a transitory\ngrowth, and few people have seen it growing.  For a time, however, the\nred weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance.  It spread up\nthe sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment,\nand its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of\nour triangular window.  And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout\nthe country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water.\n\nThe Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a\nsingle round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual\nrange not very different from ours except that, according to Philips,\nblue and violet were as black to them.  It is commonly supposed that\nthey communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is\nasserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet\n(written evidently by someone not an eye-witness of Martian actions)\nto which I have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief\nsource of information concerning them.  Now no surviving human being\nsaw so much of the Martians in action as I did.  I take no credit to\nmyself for an accident, but the fact is so.  And I assert that I\nwatched them closely time after time, and that I have seen four, five,\nand (once) six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately\ncomplicated operations together without either sound or gesture.  Their\npeculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation,\nand was, I believe, in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of\nair preparatory to the suctional operation.  I have a certain claim to\nat least an elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I\nam convinced--as firmly as I am convinced of anything--that the\nMartians interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation.\nAnd I have been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions.\nBefore the Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may\nremember, I had written with some little vehemence against the\ntelepathic theory.\n\nThe Martians wore no clothing.  Their conceptions of ornament and\ndecorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they\nevidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are,\nbut changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at\nall seriously.  Yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other\nartificial additions to their bodily resources that their great\nsuperiority over man lay.  We men, with our bicycles and road-skates,\nour Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are\njust in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked\nout.  They have become practically mere brains, wearing different\nbodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and\ntake a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet.  And of their\nappliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the\ncurious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human\ndevices in mechanism is absent--the _wheel_ is absent; among all the\nthings they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their\nuse of wheels.  One would have at least expected it in locomotion.  And\nin this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth\nNature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients\nto its development.  And not only did the Martians either not know of\n(which is incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their\napparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or\nrelatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined\nto one plane.  Almost all the joints of the machinery present a\ncomplicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully\ncurved friction bearings.  And while upon this matter of detail, it is\nremarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases\nactuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic\nsheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully\ntogether when traversed by a current of electricity.  In this way the\ncurious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and\ndisturbing to the human beholder, was attained.  Such quasi-muscles\nabounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping\nout of the slit, I watched unpacking the cylinder.  It seemed\ninfinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the\nsunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving\nfeebly after their vast journey across space.\n\nWhile I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight,\nand noting each strange detail of their form, the curate reminded me\nof his presence by pulling violently at my arm.  I turned to a\nscowling face, and silent, eloquent lips.  He wanted the slit, which\npermitted only one of us to peep through; and so I had to forego\nwatching them for a time while he enjoyed that privilege.\n\nWhen I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put\ntogether several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the\ncylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and\ndown on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view,\nemitting jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit,\nexcavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner.\nThis it was which had caused the regular beating noise, and the\nrhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering.  It piped\nand whistled as it worked.  So far as I could see, the thing was\nwithout a directing Martian at all.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THREE\n\nTHE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT\n\n\nThe arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole\ninto the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the Martian\nmight see down upon us behind our barrier.  At a later date we began\nto feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of\nthe sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at\nfirst the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery\nin heart-throbbing retreat.  Yet terrible as was the danger we\nincurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible.\nAnd I recall now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite\ndanger in which we were between starvation and a still more terrible\ndeath, we could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of\nsight.  We would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between\neagerness and the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and\nthrust and kick, within a few inches of exposure.\n\nThe fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and\nhabits of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only\naccentuated the incompatibility.  At Halliford I had already come to\nhate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity\nof mind.  His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made\nto think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and\nintensified, almost to the verge of craziness.  He was as lacking in\nrestraint as a silly woman.  He would weep for hours together, and I\nverily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought\nhis weak tears in some way efficacious.  And I would sit in the\ndarkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his\nimportunities.  He ate more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed\nout that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the\nMartians had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time\nmight presently come when we should need food.  He ate and drank\nimpulsively in heavy meals at long intervals.  He slept little.\n\nAs the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so\nintensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed\ndoing it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows.  That brought him\nto reason for a time.  But he was one of those weak creatures, void of\npride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who\nface neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.\n\nIt is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I\nset them down that my story may lack nothing.  Those who have escaped\nthe dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash\nof rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what\nis wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men.  But\nthose who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to\nelemental things, will have a wider charity.\n\nAnd while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers,\nsnatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the\npitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the\nunfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit.  Let me return to those\nfirst new experiences of mine.  After a long time I ventured back to\nthe peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the\noccupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines.  These last\nhad brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an\norderly manner about the cylinder.  The second handling-machine was now\ncompleted, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the\nbig machine had brought.  This was a body resembling a milk can in its\ngeneral form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and\nfrom which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin\nbelow.\n\nThe oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the\nhandling-machine.  With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was\ndigging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped\nreceptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door\nand removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the\nmachine.  Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin\nalong a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me\nby the mound of bluish dust.  From this unseen receiver a little\nthread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air.  As I looked,\nthe handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended,\ntelescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere\nblunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay.\nIn another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight,\nuntarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a\ngrowing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit.  Between\nsunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a\nhundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust\nrose steadily until it topped the side of the pit.\n\nThe contrast between the swift and complex movements of these\ncontrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was\nacute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter\nwere indeed the living of the two things.\n\nThe curate had possession of the slit when the first men were\nbrought to the pit.  I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with\nall my ears.  He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that\nwe were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror.  He came sliding down\nthe rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,\ngesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic.  His gesture\nsuggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my\ncuriosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and\nclambered up to it.  At first I could see no reason for his frantic\nbehaviour.  The twilight had now come, the stars were little and\nfaint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that\ncame from the aluminium-making.  The whole picture was a flickering\nscheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely\ntrying to the eyes.  Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it\nnot at all.  The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the\nmound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a\nfighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated,\nstood across the corner of the pit.  And then, amid the clangour of\nthe machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I\nentertained at first only to dismiss.\n\nI crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying\nmyself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a\nMartian.  As the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of\nhis integument and the brightness of his eyes.  And suddenly I heard\na yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the\nmachine to the little cage that hunched upon its back.  Then\nsomething--something struggling violently--was lifted high against the\nsky, a black, vague enigma against the starlight; and as this black\nobject came down again, I saw by the green brightness that it was a\nman.  For an instant he was clearly visible.  He was a stout, ruddy,\nmiddle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been\nwalking the world, a man of considerable consequence.  I could see his\nstaring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain.  He\nvanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence.  And\nthen began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the\nMartians.\n\nI slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands\nover my ears, and bolted into the scullery.  The curate, who had been\ncrouching silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed,\ncried out quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after\nme.\n\nThat night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our\nhorror and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt\nan urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of\nescape; but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider\nour position with great clearness.  The curate, I found, was quite\nincapable of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed\nhim of all vestiges of reason or forethought.  Practically he had\nalready sunk to the level of an animal.  But as the saying goes, I\ngripped myself with both hands.  It grew upon my mind, once I could\nface the facts, that terrible as our position was, there was as yet\nno justification for absolute despair.  Our chief chance lay in the\npossibility of the Martians making the pit nothing more than a\ntemporary encampment.  Or even if they kept it permanently, they might\nnot consider it necessary to guard it, and a chance of escape might be\nafforded us.  I also weighed very carefully the possibility of our\ndigging a way out in a direction away from the pit, but the chances of\nour emerging within sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at\nfirst too great.  And I should have had to do all the digging myself.\nThe curate would certainly have failed me.\n\nIt was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw\nthe lad killed.  It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the\nMartians feed.  After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall\nfor the better part of a day.  I went into the scullery, removed the\ndoor, and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as\npossible; but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the\nloose earth collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue.  I lost\nheart, and lay down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no\nspirit even to move.  And after that I abandoned altogether the idea\nof escaping by excavation.\n\nIt says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that\nat first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought\nabout by their overthrow through any human effort.  But on the fourth\nor fifth night I heard a sound like heavy guns.\n\nIt was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly.\nThe Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a\nfighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a\nhandling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the\npit immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them.\nExcept for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and\npatches of white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for\nthe clinking of the handling-machine, quite still.  That night was a\nbeautiful serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the\nsky to herself.  I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it was\nthat made me listen.  Then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly\nlike the sound of great guns.  Six distinct reports I counted, and\nafter a long interval six again.  And that was all.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FOUR\n\nTHE DEATH OF THE CURATE\n\n\nIt was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the\nlast time, and presently found myself alone.  Instead of keeping close\nto me and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back\ninto the scullery.  I was struck by a sudden thought.  I went back\nquickly and quietly into the scullery.  In the darkness I heard the\ncurate drinking.  I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a\nbottle of burgundy.\n\nFor a few minutes there was a tussle.  The bottle struck the floor\nand broke, and I desisted and rose.  We stood panting and threatening\neach other.  In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and\ntold him of my determination to begin a discipline.  I divided the\nfood in the pantry, into rations to last us ten days.  I would not let\nhim eat any more that day.  In the afternoon he made a feeble effort\nto get at the food.  I had been dozing, but in an instant I was awake.\nAll day and all night we sat face to face, I weary but resolute, and\nhe weeping and complaining of his immediate hunger.  It was, I know, a\nnight and a day, but to me it seemed--it seems now--an interminable\nlength of time.\n\nAnd so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict.\nFor two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests.\nThere were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times when I\ncajoled and persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with the last\nbottle of burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which I could\nget water.  But neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed\nbeyond reason.  He would neither desist from his attacks on the food\nnor from his noisy babbling to himself.  The rudimentary precautions\nto keep our imprisonment endurable he would not observe.  Slowly I\nbegan to realise the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to\nperceive that my sole companion in this close and sickly darkness was\na man insane.\n\nFrom certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind\nwandered at times.  I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept.\nIt sounds paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the weakness\nand insanity of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane\nman.\n\nOn the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and\nnothing I could do would moderate his speech.\n\n\"It is just, O God!\" he would say, over and over again. \"It is\njust.  On me and mine be the punishment laid.  We have sinned, we have\nfallen short.  There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in\nthe dust, and I held my peace.  I preached acceptable folly--my God,\nwhat folly!--when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and\ncalled upon them to repent--repent! . . .  Oppressors of the poor and\nneedy . . . !  The wine press of God!\"\n\nThen he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I withheld\nfrom him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening.  He began to\nraise his voice--I prayed him not to.  He perceived a hold on me--he\nthreatened he would shout and bring the Martians upon us.  For a time\nthat scared me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of\nescape beyond estimating.  I defied him, although I felt no assurance\nthat he might not do this thing.  But that day, at any rate, he did\nnot.  He talked with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part\nof the eighth and ninth days--threats, entreaties, mingled with a\ntorrent of half-sane and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham\nof God's service, such as made me pity him.  Then he slept awhile, and\nbegan again with renewed strength, so loudly that I must needs make\nhim desist.\n\n\"Be still!\" I implored.\n\nHe rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near\nthe copper.\n\n\"I have been still too long,\" he said, in a tone that must have\nreached the pit, \"and now I must bear my witness.  Woe unto this\nunfaithful city!  Woe!  Woe!  Woe!  Woe!  Woe! To the inhabitants of\nthe earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet----\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the\nMartians should hear us.  \"For God's sake----\"\n\n\"Nay,\" shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing\nlikewise and extending his arms.  \"Speak!  The word of the Lord is\nupon me!\"\n\nIn three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen.\n\n\"I must bear my witness!  I go!  It has already been too long\ndelayed.\"\n\nI put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall.\nIn a flash I was after him.  I was fierce with fear.  Before he was\nhalfway across the kitchen I had overtaken him.  With one last touch\nof humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt.  He\nwent headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground.  I stumbled\nover him and stood panting.  He lay still.\n\nSuddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping\nplaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened.  I\nlooked up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming\nslowly across the hole.  One of its gripping limbs curled amid the\ndebris; another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams.\nI stood petrified, staring.  Then I saw through a sort of glass plate\nnear the edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large\ndark eyes of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of\ntentacle came feeling slowly through the hole.\n\nI turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the\nscullery door.  The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in\nthe room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this\nway and that.  For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful\nadvance.  Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the\nscullery.  I trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright.  I\nopened the door of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness\nstaring at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening.\nHad the Martian seen me?  What was it doing now?\n\nSomething was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and\nthen it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a\nfaint metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring.\nThen a heavy body--I knew too well what--was dragged across the floor\nof the kitchen towards the opening.  Irresistibly attracted, I crept\nto the door and peeped into the kitchen.  In the triangle of bright\nouter sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling-machine,\nscrutinizing the curate's head.  I thought at once that it would infer\nmy presence from the mark of the blow I had given him.\n\nI crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover\nmyself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible in the\ndarkness, among the firewood and coal therein.  Every now and then I\npaused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacles through\nthe opening again.\n\nThen the faint metallic jingle returned.  I traced it slowly\nfeeling over the kitchen.  Presently I heard it nearer--in the\nscullery, as I judged.  I thought that its length might be\ninsufficient to reach me.  I prayed copiously.  It passed, scraping\nfaintly across the cellar door.  An age of almost intolerable suspense\nintervened; then I heard it fumbling at the latch! It had found the\ndoor!  The Martians understood doors!\n\nIt worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door\nopened.\n\nIn the darkness I could just see the thing--like an elephant's\ntrunk more than anything else--waving towards me and touching and\nexamining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling.  It was like a black worm\nswaying its blind head to and fro.\n\nOnce, even, it touched the heel of my boot.  I was on the verge of\nscreaming; I bit my hand.  For a time the tentacle was silent.  I\ncould have fancied it had been withdrawn.  Presently, with an abrupt\nclick, it gripped something--I thought it had me!--and seemed to go\nout of the cellar again.  For a minute I was not sure.  Apparently it\nhad taken a lump of coal to examine.\n\nI seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which\nhad become cramped, and then listened.  I whispered passionate prayers\nfor safety.\n\nThen I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again.\nSlowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and tapping\nthe furniture.\n\nWhile I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar\ndoor and closed it.  I heard it go into the pantry, and the biscuit-tins\nrattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against\nthe cellar door.  Then silence that passed into an infinity of\nsuspense.\n\nHad it gone?\n\nAt last I decided that it had.\n\nIt came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in\nthe close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even\nto crawl out for the drink for which I craved.  It was the eleventh day\nbefore I ventured so far from my security.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER FIVE\n\nTHE STILLNESS\n\n\nMy first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door\nbetween the kitchen and the scullery.  But the pantry was empty; every\nscrap of food had gone.  Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on\nthe previous day.  At that discovery I despaired for the first time.  I\ntook no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day.\n\nAt first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed\nsensibly.  I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of\ndespondent wretchedness.  My mind ran on eating.  I thought I had\nbecome deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear\nfrom the pit had ceased absolutely.  I did not feel strong enough to\ncrawl noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.\n\nOn the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance\nof alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that\nstood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and\ntainted rain water.  I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened\nby the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my\npumping.\n\nDuring these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much\nof the curate and of the manner of his death.\n\nOn the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and\nthought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of\nescape.  Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death\nof the curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a\nkeen pain that urged me to drink again and again.  The light that came\ninto the scullery was no longer grey, but red.  To my disordered\nimagination it seemed the colour of blood.\n\nOn the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised\nto find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across\nthe hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a\ncrimson-coloured obscurity.\n\nIt was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar\nsequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as\nthe snuffing and scratching of a dog.  Going into the kitchen, I saw a\ndog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds.  This\ngreatly surprised me.  At the scent of me he barked shortly.\n\nI thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I\nshould be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it\nwould be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the\nattention of the Martians.\n\nI crept forward, saying \"Good dog!\" very softly; but he suddenly\nwithdrew his head and disappeared.\n\nI listened--I was not deaf--but certainly the pit was still.  I\nheard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse\ncroaking, but that was all.\n\nFor a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to\nmove aside the red plants that obscured it.  Once or twice I heard a\nfaint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither\non the sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but\nthat was all.  At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.\n\nExcept in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought\nover the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was\nnot a living thing in the pit.\n\nI stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes.  All the machinery\nhad gone.  Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one\ncorner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the\nskeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in\nthe sand.\n\nSlowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the\nmound of rubble.  I could see in any direction save behind me, to the\nnorth, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen.  The\npit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish\nafforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins.  My chance of\nescape had come.  I began to tremble.\n\nI hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate\nresolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to\nthe top of the mound in which I had been buried so long.\n\nI looked about again.  To the northward, too, no Martian was\nvisible.\n\nWhen I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been\na straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed\nwith abundant shady trees.  Now I stood on a mound of smashed\nbrickwork, clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red\ncactus-shaped plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth\nto dispute their footing.  The trees near me were dead and brown, but\nfurther a network of red thread scaled the still living stems.\n\nThe neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been\nburned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed\nwindows and shattered doors.  The red weed grew tumultuously in their\nroofless rooms.  Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling\nfor its refuse.  A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins.\nFar away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces\nof men there were none.\n\nThe day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly\nbright, the sky a glowing blue.  A gentle breeze kept the red weed\nthat covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying.  And oh!\nthe sweetness of the air!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SIX\n\nTHE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS\n\n\nFor some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my\nsafety.  Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had\nthought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security.  I had\nnot realised what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated\nthis startling vision of unfamiliar things.  I had expected to see\nSheen in ruins--I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of\nanother planet.\n\nFor that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of\nmen, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well.  I\nfelt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly\nconfronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations\nof a house.  I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew\nquite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of\ndethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an\nanimal among the animals, under the Martian heel.  With us it would be\nas with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire\nof man had passed away.\n\nBut so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my\ndominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast.  In the\ndirection away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch\nof garden ground unburied.  This gave me a hint, and I went knee-deep,\nand sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed.  The density of the\nweed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding.  The wall was some six feet\nhigh, and when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my\nfeet to the crest.  So I went along by the side of it, and came to a\ncorner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble\ninto the garden I coveted.  Here I found some young onions, a couple\nof gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I\nsecured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through\nscarlet and crimson trees towards Kew--it was like walking through an\navenue of gigantic blood drops--possessed with two ideas: to get more\nfood, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of\nthis accursed unearthly region of the pit.\n\nSome way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which\nalso I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow\nwater, where meadows used to be.  These fragments of nourishment served\nonly to whet my hunger.  At first I was surprised at this flood in a\nhot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the\ntropical exuberance of the red weed.  Directly this extraordinary\ngrowth encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of\nunparalleled fecundity.  Its seeds were simply poured down into the\nwater of the Wey and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water\nfronds speedily choked both those rivers.\n\nAt Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a\ntangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in\na broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and\nTwickenham.  As the water spread the weed followed them, until the\nruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red\nswamp, whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the\nMartians had caused was concealed.\n\nIn the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had\nspread.  A cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of\ncertain bacteria, presently seized upon it.  Now by the action of\nnatural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting\npower against bacterial diseases--they never succumb without a severe\nstruggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.  The\nfronds became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle.  They broke\noff at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early\ngrowth carried their last vestiges out to sea.\n\nMy first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my\nthirst.  I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed\nsome fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly,\nmetallic taste.  I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to\nwade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the\nflood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to\nMortlake.  I managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins\nof its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out of this\nspate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came\nout on Putney Common.\n\nHere the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the\nwreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation\nof a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly\nundisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors\nclosed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if\ntheir inhabitants slept within.  The red weed was less abundant; the\ntall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper.  I hunted\nfor food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple\nof silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked.\nI rested for the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery, being, in\nmy enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on.\n\nAll this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians.\nI encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried\ncircuitously away from the advances I made them.  Near Roehampton I\nhad seen two human skeletons--not bodies, but skeletons, picked\nclean--and in the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones\nof several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep.  But though I\ngnawed parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from\nthem.\n\nAfter sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where I\nthink the Heat-Ray must have been used for some reason.  And in the\ngarden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes,\nsufficient to stay my hunger.  From this garden one looked down upon\nPutney and the river.  The aspect of the place in the dusk was\nsingularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and\ndown the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the\nweed.  And over all--silence.  It filled me with indescribable terror\nto think how swiftly that desolating change had come.\n\nFor a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence,\nand that I stood there alone, the last man left alive.  Hard by the\ntop of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms\ndislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body.  As I\nproceeded I became more and more convinced that the extermination of\nmankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished\nin this part of the world.  The Martians, I thought, had gone on and\nleft the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere.  Perhaps even now\nthey were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone\nnorthward.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER SEVEN\n\nTHE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL\n\n\nI spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney\nHill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to\nLeatherhead.  I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into\nthat house--afterwards I found the front door was on the latch--nor\nhow I ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of\ndespair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom, I found a\nrat-gnawed crust and two tins of pineapple.  The place had been\nalready searched and emptied.  In the bar I afterwards found some\nbiscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked.  The latter I could\nnot eat, they were too rotten, but the former not only stayed my\nhunger, but filled my pockets.  I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian\nmight come beating that part of London for food in the night.  Before\nI went to bed I had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from\nwindow to window, peering out for some sign of these monsters.  I\nslept little.  As I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively--a\nthing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the\ncurate.  During all the intervening time my mental condition had been\na hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid\nreceptivity.  But in the night my brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the\nfood I had eaten, grew clear again, and I thought.\n\nThree things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of\nthe curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of\nmy wife.  The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to\nrecall; I saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely\ndisagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse.  I saw myself\nthen as I see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow,\nthe creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that.  I\nfelt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted\nme.  In the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of\nGod that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood\nmy trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear.  I\nretraced every step of our conversation from the moment when I had\nfound him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to\nthe fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge.  We\nhad been incapable of co-operation--grim chance had taken no heed of\nthat.  Had I foreseen, I should have left him at Halliford.  But I did\nnot foresee; and crime is to foresee and do.  And I set this down as I\nhave set all this story down, as it was.  There were no witnesses--all\nthese things I might have concealed.  But I set it down, and the\nreader must form his judgment as he will.\n\nAnd when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate\nbody, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife.  For\nthe former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so,\nunhappily, I could for the latter.  And suddenly that night became\nterrible.  I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark.  I\nfound myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and\npainlessly struck her out of being.  Since the night of my return from\nLeatherhead I had not prayed.  I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers,\nhad prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now\nI prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with\nthe darkness of God.  Strange night!  Strangest in this, that so soon\nas dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house\nlike a rat leaving its hiding place--a creature scarcely larger, an\ninferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters\nmight be hunted and killed.  Perhaps they also prayed confidently to\nGod.  Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us\npity--pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.\n\nThe morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink,\nand was fretted with little golden clouds.  In the road that runs from\nthe top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of\nthe panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night\nafter the fighting began.  There was a little two-wheeled cart\ninscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with\na smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat\ntrampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot\nof blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough.  My\nmovements were languid, my plans of the vaguest.  I had an idea of\ngoing to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest\nchance of finding my wife.  Certainly, unless death had overtaken them\nsuddenly, my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to\nme I might find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled.  I\nknew I wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the\nworld of men, but I had no clear idea how the finding might be done.  I\nwas also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness.  From the corner\nI went, under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of\nWimbledon Common, stretching wide and far.\n\nThat dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom;\nthere was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the\nverge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and\nvitality.  I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place\namong the trees.  I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from\ntheir stout resolve to live.  And presently, turning suddenly, with an\nodd feeling of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a\nclump of bushes.  I stood regarding this.  I made a step towards it,\nand it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass.  I approached\nhim slowly.  He stood silent and motionless, regarding me.\n\nAs I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and\nfilthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged\nthrough a culvert.  Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches\nmixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches.  His\nblack hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and\nsunken, so that at first I did not recognise him.  There was a red cut\nacross the lower part of his face.\n\n\"Stop!\" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I\nstopped.  His voice was hoarse.  \"Where do you come from?\" he said.\n\nI thought, surveying him.\n\n\"I come from Mortlake,\" I said.  \"I was buried near the pit the\nMartians made about their cylinder.  I have worked my way out and\nescaped.\"\n\n\"There is no food about here,\" he said.  \"This is my country.  All\nthis hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge\nof the common.  There is only food for one.  Which way are you going?\"\n\nI answered slowly.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said.  \"I have been buried in the ruins of a\nhouse thirteen or fourteen days.  I don't know what has happened.\"\n\nHe looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed\nexpression.\n\n\"I've no wish to stop about here,\" said I.  \"I think I shall go to\nLeatherhead, for my wife was there.\"\n\nHe shot out a pointing finger.\n\n\"It is you,\" said he; \"the man from Woking.  And you weren't killed\nat Weybridge?\"\n\nI recognised him at the same moment.\n\n\"You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.\"\n\n\"Good luck!\" he said.  \"We are lucky ones!  Fancy _you_!\"  He put out\na hand, and I took it.  \"I crawled up a drain,\" he said. \"But they\ndidn't kill everyone.  And after they went away I got off towards\nWalton across the fields.  But---- It's not sixteen days altogether--and\nyour hair is grey.\"  He looked over his shoulder suddenly.  \"Only\na rook,\" he said.  \"One gets to know that birds have shadows these\ndays.  This is a bit open.  Let us crawl under those bushes and talk.\"\n\n\"Have you seen any Martians?\" I said.  \"Since I crawled out----\"\n\n\"They've gone away across London,\" he said.  \"I guess they've got a\nbigger camp there.  Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky\nis alive with their lights.  It's like a great city, and in the glare\nyou can just see them moving.  By daylight you can't.  But nearer--I\nhaven't seen them--\" (he counted on his fingers) \"five days.  Then I\nsaw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big.  And the\nnight before last\"--he stopped and spoke impressively--\"it was just a\nmatter of lights, but it was something up in the air.  I believe\nthey've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly.\"\n\nI stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.\n\n\"Fly!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, \"fly.\"\n\nI went on into a little bower, and sat down.\n\n\"It is all over with humanity,\" I said.  \"If they can do that they\nwill simply go round the world.\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"They will.  But---- It will relieve things over here a bit.  And\nbesides----\"  He looked at me.  \"Aren't you satisfied it _is_ up with\nhumanity?  I am.  We're down; we're beat.\"\n\nI stared.  Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact--a\nfact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke.  I had still held a\nvague hope; rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind.  He repeated\nhis words, \"We're beat.\"  They carried absolute conviction.\n\n\"It's all over,\" he said.  \"They've lost _one_--just _one_.  And they've\nmade their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world.\nThey've walked over us.  The death of that one at Weybridge was an\naccident.  And these are only pioneers.  They kept on coming.  These\ngreen stars--I've seen none these five or six days, but I've no doubt\nthey're falling somewhere every night.  Nothing's to be done.  We're\nunder! We're beat!\"\n\nI made him no answer.  I sat staring before me, trying in vain to\ndevise some countervailing thought.\n\n\"This isn't a war,\" said the artilleryman.  \"It never was a war,\nany more than there's war between man and ants.\"\n\nSuddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.\n\n\"After the tenth shot they fired no more--at least, until the first\ncylinder came.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" said the artilleryman.  I explained.  He thought.\n\"Something wrong with the gun,\" he said.  \"But what if there is?\nThey'll get it right again.  And even if there's a delay, how can it\nalter the end?  It's just men and ants.  There's the ants builds their\ncities, live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want\nthem out of the way, and then they go out of the way.  That's what we\nare now--just ants.  Only----\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\"We're eatable ants.\"\n\nWe sat looking at each other.\n\n\"And what will they do with us?\" I said.\n\n\"That's what I've been thinking,\" he said; \"that's what I've been\nthinking.  After Weybridge I went south--thinking.  I saw what was up.\nMost of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves.\nBut I'm not so fond of squealing.  I've been in sight of death once or\ntwice; I'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst,\ndeath--it's just death.  And it's the man that keeps on thinking comes\nthrough.  I saw everyone tracking away south.  Says I, 'Food won't\nlast this way,' and I turned right back.  I went for the Martians like\na sparrow goes for man.  All round\"--he waved a hand to the\nhorizon--\"they're starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other.\n. . .\"\n\nHe saw my face, and halted awkwardly.\n\n\"No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France,\" he said.  He\nseemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on:\n\"There's food all about here.  Canned things in shops; wines, spirits,\nmineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty.  Well, I was\ntelling you what I was thinking.  'Here's intelligent things,' I said,\n'and it seems they want us for food.  First, they'll smash us up--ships,\nmachines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation.  All\nthat will go.  If we were the size of ants we might pull through.  But\nwe're not.  It's all too bulky to stop.  That's the first certainty.'\nEh?\"\n\nI assented.\n\n\"It is; I've thought it out.  Very well, then--next; at present\nwe're caught as we're wanted.  A Martian has only to go a few miles to\nget a crowd on the run.  And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth,\npicking houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage.  But they\nwon't keep on doing that.  So soon as they've settled all our guns and\nships, and smashed our railways, and done all the things they are\ndoing over there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the\nbest and storing us in cages and things.  That's what they will start\ndoing in a bit.  Lord!  They haven't begun on us yet.  Don't you see\nthat?\"\n\n\"Not begun!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"Not begun.  All that's happened so far is through our not having\nthe sense to keep quiet--worrying them with guns and such foolery.  And\nlosing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any\nmore safety than where we were.  They don't want to bother us yet.\nThey're making their things--making all the things they couldn't bring\nwith them, getting things ready for the rest of their people.  Very\nlikely that's why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of\nhitting those who are here.  And instead of our rushing about blind,\non the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up,\nwe've got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs.\nThat's how I figure it out.  It isn't quite according to what a man\nwants for his species, but it's about what the facts point to.  And\nthat's the principle I acted upon.  Cities, nations, civilisation,\nprogress--it's all over.  That game's up.  We're beat.\"\n\n\"But if that is so, what is there to live for?\"\n\nThe artilleryman looked at me for a moment.\n\n\"There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or\nso; there won't be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds\nat restaurants.  If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is\nup.  If you've got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating\npeas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck 'em away.\nThey ain't no further use.\"\n\n\"You mean----\"\n\n\"I mean that men like me are going on living--for the sake of the\nbreed.  I tell you, I'm grim set on living.  And if I'm not mistaken,\nyou'll show what insides _you've_ got, too, before long.  We aren't\ngoing to be exterminated.  And I don't mean to be caught either, and\ntamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox.  Ugh! Fancy those\nbrown creepers!\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say----\"\n\n\"I do.  I'm going on, under their feet.  I've got it planned; I've\nthought it out.  We men are beat.  We don't know enough.  We've got to\nlearn before we've got a chance.  And we've got to live and keep\nindependent while we learn.  See! That's what has to be done.\"\n\nI stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man's\nresolution.\n\n\"Great God!\" cried I.  \"But you are a man indeed!\"  And suddenly I\ngripped his hand.\n\n\"Eh!\" he said, with his eyes shining.  \"I've thought it out, eh?\"\n\n\"Go on,\" I said.\n\n\"Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready.  I'm\ngetting ready.  Mind you, it isn't all of us that are made for wild\nbeasts; and that's what it's got to be.  That's why I watched you.  I\nhad my doubts.  You're slender.  I didn't know that it was you, you\nsee, or just how you'd been buried.  All these--the sort of people\nthat lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used\nto live down that way--they'd be no good.  They haven't any spirit in\nthem--no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or\nthe other--Lord!  What is he but funk and precautions?  They just used\nto skedaddle off to work--I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast\nin hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket\ntrain, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at\nbusinesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand;\nskedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner; keeping\nindoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with\nthe wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they\nhad a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little\nmiserable skedaddle through the world.  Lives insured and a bit\ninvested for fear of accidents.  And on Sundays--fear of the\nhereafter.  As if hell was built for rabbits!  Well, the Martians will\njust be a godsend to these.  Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful\nbreeding, no worry.  After a week or so chasing about the fields and\nlands on empty stomachs, they'll come and be caught cheerful.  They'll\nbe quite glad after a bit.  They'll wonder what people did before\nthere were Martians to take care of them.  And the bar loafers, and\nmashers, and singers--I can imagine them.  I can imagine them,\" he\nsaid, with a sort of sombre gratification.  \"There'll be any amount of\nsentiment and religion loose among them.  There's hundreds of things I\nsaw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these last few\ndays.  There's lots will take things as they are--fat and stupid; and\nlots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong, and\nthat they ought to be doing something.  Now whenever things are so\nthat a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak,\nand those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make\nfor a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and\nsubmit to persecution and the will of the Lord.  Very likely you've\nseen the same thing.  It's energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean\ninside out.  These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety.\nAnd those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of--what is\nit?--eroticism.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train\nthem to do tricks--who knows?--get sentimental over the pet boy who\ngrew up and had to be killed.  And some, maybe, they will train to\nhunt us.\"\n\n\"No,\" I cried, \"that's impossible!  No human being----\"\n\n\"What's the good of going on with such lies?\" said the\nartilleryman.  \"There's men who'd do it cheerful.  What nonsense to\npretend there isn't!\"\n\nAnd I succumbed to his conviction.\n\n\"If they come after me,\" he said; \"Lord, if they come after me!\"\nand subsided into a grim meditation.\n\nI sat contemplating these things.  I could find nothing to bring\nagainst this man's reasoning.  In the days before the invasion no one\nwould have questioned my intellectual superiority to his--I, a\nprofessed and recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a\ncommon soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that I\nhad scarcely realised.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I said presently.  \"What plans have you\nmade?\"\n\nHe hesitated.\n\n\"Well, it's like this,\" he said.  \"What have we to do?  We have to\ninvent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be\nsufficiently secure to bring the children up.  Yes--wait a bit, and\nI'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done.  The tame ones\nwill go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big,\nbeautiful, rich-blooded, stupid--rubbish! The risk is that we who keep\nwild will go savage--degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . .\nYou see, how I mean to live is underground.  I've been thinking about\nthe drains.  Of course those who don't know drains think horrible\nthings; but under this London are miles and miles--hundreds of\nmiles--and a few days rain and London empty will leave them sweet and\nclean. The main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone.\nThen there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may\nbe made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways.  Eh?  You\nbegin to see?  And we form a band--able-bodied, clean-minded men.\nWe're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in.  Weaklings\ngo out again.\"\n\n\"As you meant me to go?\"\n\n\"Well--I parleyed, didn't I?\"\n\n\"We won't quarrel about that.  Go on.\"\n\n\"Those who stop obey orders.  Able-bodied, clean-minded women we\nwant also--mothers and teachers.  No lackadaisical ladies--no blasted\nrolling eyes.  We can't have any weak or silly.  Life is real again,\nand the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.  They\nought to die.  They ought to be willing to die.  It's a sort of\ndisloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.  And they can't be\nhappy.  Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it\nbad.  And in all those places we shall gather.  Our district will be\nLondon.  And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the\nopen when the Martians keep away.  Play cricket, perhaps.  That's how\nwe shall save the race.  Eh?  It's a possible thing?  But saving the\nrace is nothing in itself.  As I say, that's only being rats.  It's\nsaving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing.  There men like\nyou come in.  There's books, there's models.  We must make great safe\nplaces down deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry\nswipes, but ideas, science books.  That's where men like you come in.\nWe must go to the British Museum and pick all those books through.\nEspecially we must keep up our science--learn more.  We must watch\nthese Martians.  Some of us must go as spies.  When it's all working,\nperhaps I will.  Get caught, I mean.  And the great thing is, we must\nleave the Martians alone.  We mustn't even steal.  If we get in their\nway, we clear out.  We must show them we mean no harm.  Yes, I know.\nBut they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they\nhave all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin.\"\n\nThe artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.\n\n\"After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before--Just\nimagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly\nstarting off--Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em.  Not\na Martian in 'em, but men--men who have learned the way how.  It may\nbe in my time, even--those men.  Fancy having one of them lovely\nthings, with its Heat-Ray wide and free!  Fancy having it in control!\nWhat would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the\nrun, after a bust like that?  I reckon the Martians'll open their\nbeautiful eyes!  Can't you see them, man?  Can't you see them\nhurrying, hurrying--puffing and blowing and hooting to their other\nmechanical affairs?  Something out of gear in every case.  And swish,\nbang, rattle, swish!  Just as they are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes\nthe Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own.\"\n\nFor a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the\ntone of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my\nmind.  I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny\nand in the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader\nwho thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position,\nreading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine,\ncrouching fearfully in the bushes and listening, distracted by\napprehension.  We talked in this manner through the early morning\ntime, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky\nfor Martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where\nhe had made his lair.  It was the coal cellar of the place, and when I\nsaw the work he had spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten\nyards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney\nHill--I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his\npowers.  Such a hole I could have dug in a day.  But I believed in him\nsufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at\nhis digging.  We had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed\nagainst the kitchen range.  We refreshed ourselves with a tin of\nmock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry.  I found a\ncurious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady\nlabour. As we worked, I turned his project over in my mind, and\npresently objections and doubts began to arise; but I worked there all\nthe morning, so glad was I to find myself with a purpose again.  After\nworking an hour I began to speculate on the distance one had to go\nbefore the cloaca was reached, the chances we had of missing it\naltogether.  My immediate trouble was why we should dig this long\ntunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of\nthe manholes, and work back to the house.  It seemed to me, too, that\nthe house was inconveniently chosen, and required a needless length of\ntunnel.  And just as I was beginning to face these things, the\nartilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.\n\n\"We're working well,\" he said.  He put down his spade. \"Let us\nknock off a bit\" he said.  \"I think it's time we reconnoitred from the\nroof of the house.\"\n\nI was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his\nspade; and then suddenly I was struck by a thought.  I stopped, and so\ndid he at once.\n\n\"Why were you walking about the common,\" I said, \"instead of being\nhere?\"\n\n\"Taking the air,\" he said.  \"I was coming back.  It's safer by\nnight.\"\n\n\"But the work?\"\n\n\"Oh, one can't always work,\" he said, and in a flash I saw the man\nplain.  He hesitated, holding his spade.  \"We ought to reconnoitre\nnow,\" he said, \"because if any come near they may hear the spades and\ndrop upon us unawares.\"\n\nI was no longer disposed to object.  We went together to the roof\nand stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door.  No Martians were\nto be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under\nshelter of the parapet.\n\nFrom this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney,\nbut we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the\nlow parts of Lambeth flooded and red.  The red creeper swarmed up the\ntrees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and\ndead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters.  It was\nstrange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing\nwater for their propagation.  About us neither had gained a footing;\nlaburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of\nlaurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight.  Beyond\nKensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the\nnorthward hills.\n\nThe artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still\nremained in London.\n\n\"One night last week,\" he said, \"some fools got the electric light\nin order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze,\ncrowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and\nshouting till dawn.  A man who was there told me.  And as the day came\nthey became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham\nand looking down at them.  Heaven knows how long he had been there.\nIt must have given some of them a nasty turn.  He came down the road\ntowards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened\nto run away.\"\n\nGrotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!\n\nFrom that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his\ngrandiose plans again.  He grew enthusiastic.  He talked so eloquently\nof the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than\nhalf believed in him again.  But now that I was beginning to\nunderstand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid\non doing nothing precipitately.  And I noted that now there was no\nquestion that he personally was to capture and fight the great\nmachine.\n\nAfter a time we went down to the cellar.  Neither of us seemed\ndisposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was\nnothing loath.  He became suddenly very generous, and when we had\neaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars.  We lit\nthese, and his optimism glowed.  He was inclined to regard my coming\nas a great occasion.\n\n\"There's some champagne in the cellar,\" he said.\n\n\"We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,\" said I.\n\n\"No,\" said he; \"I am host today.  Champagne!  Great God! We've a\nheavy enough task before us!  Let us take a rest and gather strength\nwhile we may.  Look at these blistered hands!\"\n\nAnd pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing\ncards after we had eaten.  He taught me euchre, and after dividing\nLondon between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we\nplayed for parish points.  Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to\nthe sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable,\nI found the card game and several others we played extremely\ninteresting.\n\nStrange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of\nextermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before\nus but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the\nchance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the \"joker\" with vivid\ndelight.  Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough\nchess games.  When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a\nlamp.\n\nAfter an interminable string of games, we supped, and the\nartilleryman finished the champagne.  We went on smoking the cigars.\nHe was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had\nencountered in the morning.  He was still optimistic, but it was a\nless kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism.  I remember he wound up with\nmy health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable\nintermittence.  I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the\nlights of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the\nHighgate hills.\n\nAt first I stared unintelligently across the London valley.  The\nnorthern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington\nglowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed\nup and vanished in the deep blue night.  All the rest of London\nwas black.  Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale,\nviolet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze.  For\na space I could not understand it, and then I knew that it must be\nthe red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded.  With that\nrealisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of\nthings, awoke again.  I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear,\nglowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the\ndarkness of Hampstead and Highgate.\n\nI remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the\ngrotesque changes of the day.  I recalled my mental states from the\nmidnight prayer to the foolish card-playing.  I had a violent\nrevulsion of feeling.  I remember I flung away the cigar with a\ncertain wasteful symbolism.  My folly came to me with glaring\nexaggeration.  I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was\nfilled with remorse.  I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined\ndreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into\nLondon.  There, it seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning\nwhat the Martians and my fellowmen were doing.  I was still upon the\nroof when the late moon rose.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER EIGHT\n\nDEAD LONDON\n\n\nAfter I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and\nby the High Street across the bridge to Fulham.  The red weed was\ntumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its\nfronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that\npresently removed it so swiftly.\n\nAt the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I\nfound a man lying.  He was as black as a sweep with the black dust,\nalive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk.  I could get nothing\nfrom him but curses and furious lunges at my head.  I think I should\nhave stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face.\n\nThere was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and\nit grew thicker in Fulham.  The streets were horribly quiet.  I got\nfood--sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable--in a baker's shop\nhere.  Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of\npowder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of\nthe burning was an absolute relief.  Going on towards Brompton, the\nstreets were quiet again.\n\nHere I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon\ndead bodies.  I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the\nFulham Road.  They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly\npast them.  The black powder covered them over, and softened their\noutlines.  One or two had been disturbed by dogs.\n\nWhere there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in\nthe City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds\ndrawn, the desertion, and the stillness.  In some places plunderers\nhad been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine\nshops.  A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but\napparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains\nand a watch lay scattered on the pavement.  I did not trouble to touch\nthem.  Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the\nhand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown\ndress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the\npavement.  She seemed asleep, but she was dead.\n\nThe farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the\nstillness.  But it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the\nstillness of suspense, of expectation.  At any time the destruction\nthat had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis,\nand had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these\nhouses and leave them smoking ruins.  It was a city condemned and\nderelict. . . .\n\nIn South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black\npowder.  It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling.\nIt crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses.  It was a sobbing\nalternation of two notes, \"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\" keeping on\nperpetually.  When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in\nvolume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off\nagain.  It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road.  I stopped,\nstaring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote\nwailing.  It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice\nfor its fear and solitude.\n\n\"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\" wailed that superhuman note--great waves\nof sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall\nbuildings on each side.  I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the\niron gates of Hyde Park.  I had half a mind to break into the Natural\nHistory Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in\norder to see across the park.  But I decided to keep to the ground,\nwhere quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition\nRoad.  All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and\nstill, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses.  At\nthe top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight--a bus\noverturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean.  I puzzled over\nthis for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine.\nThe voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above\nthe housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to\nthe northwest.\n\n\"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\" cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to\nme, from the district about Regent's Park.  The desolating cry worked\nupon my mind.  The mood that had sustained me passed.  The wailing\ntook possession of me.  I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and\nnow again hungry and thirsty.\n\nIt was already past noon.  Why was I wandering alone in this city\nof the dead?  Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and\nin its black shroud?  I felt intolerably lonely.  My mind ran on old\nfriends that I had forgotten for years.  I thought of the poisons in\nthe chemists' shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I\nrecalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew,\nshared the city with myself. . . .\n\nI came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were\nblack powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the\ngratings of the cellars of some of the houses.  I grew very thirsty\nafter the heat of my long walk.  With infinite trouble I managed to\nbreak into a public-house and get food and drink.  I was weary after\neating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black\nhorsehair sofa I found there.\n\nI awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, \"Ulla, ulla,\nulla, ulla.\"  It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some\nbiscuits and a cheese in the bar--there was a meat safe, but it\ncontained nothing but maggots--I wandered on through the silent\nresidential squares to Baker Street--Portman Square is the only one I\ncan name--and so came out at last upon Regent's Park.  And as I\nemerged from the top of Baker Street, I saw far away over the trees in\nthe clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which\nthis howling proceeded.  I was not terrified.  I came upon him as if\nit were a matter of course.  I watched him for some time, but he did\nnot move.  He appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that\nI could discover.\n\nI tried to formulate a plan of action.  That perpetual sound of\n\"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\" confused my mind.  Perhaps I was too tired\nto be very fearful.  Certainly I was more curious to know the reason\nof this monotonous crying than afraid.  I turned back away from the\npark and struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went\nalong under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this\nstationary, howling Martian from the direction of St. John's Wood.  A\ncouple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus,\nand saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws\ncoming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in\npursuit of him.  He made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared\nI might prove a fresh competitor.  As the yelping died away down the\nsilent road, the wailing sound of \"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\" reasserted\nitself.\n\nI came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John's Wood\nstation.  At first I thought a house had fallen across the road.  It\nwas only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this\nmechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and\ntwisted, among the ruins it had made.  The forepart was shattered.  It\nseemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been\noverwhelmed in its overthrow.  It seemed to me then that this might\nhave happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its\nMartian.  I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the\ntwilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat\nwas smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had\nleft, were invisible to me.\n\nWondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards\nPrimrose Hill.  Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second\nMartian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the\nZoological Gardens, and silent.  A little beyond the ruins about the\nsmashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found the\nRegent's Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation.\n\nAs I crossed the bridge, the sound of \"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,\"\nceased.  It was, as it were, cut off.  The silence came like a\nthunderclap.\n\nThe dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees\ntowards the park were growing black.  All about me the red weed\nclambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness.\nNight, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.  But while\nthat voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable;\nby virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life\nabout me had upheld me.  Then suddenly a change, the passing of\nsomething--I knew not what--and then a stillness that could be felt.\nNothing but this gaunt quiet.\n\nLondon about me gazed at me spectrally.  The windows in the white\nhouses were like the eye sockets of skulls.  About me my imagination\nfound a thousand noiseless enemies moving.  Terror seized me, a horror\nof my temerity.  In front of me the road became pitchy black as though\nit was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway.  I\ncould not bring myself to go on.  I turned down St. John's Wood Road,\nand ran headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn.  I\nhid from the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a\ncabmen's shelter in Harrow Road.  But before the dawn my courage\nreturned, and while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more\ntowards Regent's Park.  I missed my way among the streets, and\npresently saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn,\nthe curve of Primrose Hill.  On the summit, towering up to the fading\nstars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless like the others.\n\nAn insane resolve possessed me.  I would die and end it.  And I\nwould save myself even the trouble of killing myself.  I marched on\nrecklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the\nlight grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and\nclustering about the hood.  At that my heart gave a bound, and I began\nrunning along the road.\n\nI hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund's Terrace (I\nwaded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from\nthe waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass\nbefore the rising of the sun.  Great mounds had been heaped about the\ncrest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it--it was the final and\nlargest place the Martians had made--and from behind these heaps there\nrose a thin smoke against the sky.  Against the sky line an eager dog\nran and disappeared.  The thought that had flashed into my mind grew\nreal, grew credible.  I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling\nexultation, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster.  Out\nof the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds\npecked and tore.\n\nIn another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood\nupon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me.  A\nmighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it,\nhuge mounds of material and strange shelter places.  And scattered\nabout it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid\nhandling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a\nrow, were the Martians--_dead_!--slain by the putrefactive and disease\nbacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red\nweed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by\nthe humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.\n\nFor so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have\nforeseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.  These\ngerms of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of\nthings--taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here.\nBut by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed\nresisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to\nmany--those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance--our\nliving frames are altogether immune.  But there are no bacteria in\nMars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and\nfed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.  Already\nwhen I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting\neven as they went to and fro.  It was inevitable.  By the toll of a\nbillion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is\nhis against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten\ntimes as mighty as they are.  For neither do men live nor die in vain.\n\nHere and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in\nthat great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have\nseemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be.  To me also\nat that time this death was incomprehensible.  All I knew was that\nthese things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead.\nFor a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been\nrepeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain\nthem in the night.\n\nI stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously,\neven as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his\nrays.  The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and\nwonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their\ntortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows\ntowards the light.  A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the\nbodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me.  Across\nthe pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great\nflying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser\natmosphere when decay and death arrested them.  Death had come not a\nday too soon.  At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the\nhuge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the\ntattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned\nseats on the summit of Primrose Hill.\n\nI turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed\nnow in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen\novernight, just as death had overtaken them.  The one had died, even\nas it had been crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to\ndie, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its\nmachinery was exhausted.  They glittered now, harmless tripod towers\nof shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun.\n\nAll about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting\ndestruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities.  Those who have only\nseen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine\nthe naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses.\n\nEastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the\nsplintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear\nsky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs\ncaught the light and glared with a white intensity.\n\nNorthward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses;\nwestward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the\nMartians, the green waves of Regent's Park, the Langham Hotel, the\ndome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant\nmansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the\nsunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond.  Far\naway and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal\nPalace glittered like two silver rods.  The dome of St. Paul's was\ndark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a\nhuge gaping cavity on its western side.\n\nAnd as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and\nchurches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous\nhopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to\nbuild this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that\nhad hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled\nback, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast\ndead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of\nemotion that was near akin to tears.\n\nThe torment was over.  Even that day the healing would begin.  The\nsurvivors of the people scattered over the country--leaderless,\nlawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd--the thousands who\nhad fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing\nstronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour\nacross the vacant squares.  Whatever destruction was done, the hand of\nthe destroyer was stayed.  All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened\nskeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the\nhill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and\nringing with the tapping of their trowels.  At the thought I extended\nmy hands towards the sky and began thanking God.  In a year, thought\nI--in a year. . .\n\nWith overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and\nthe old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER NINE\n\nWRECKAGE\n\n\nAnd now comes the strangest thing in my story.  Yet, perhaps, it is\nnot altogether strange.  I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly,\nall that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and\npraising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill.  And then I forget.\n\nOf the next three days I know nothing.  I have learned since that,\nso far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,\nseveral such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the\nprevious night.  One man--the first--had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand,\nand, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to\ntelegraph to Paris.  Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the\nworld; a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly\nflashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin,\nEdinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the\nverge of the pit.  Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard,\nshouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making\nup trains, even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London.  The church\nbells that had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news,\nuntil all England was bell-ringing.  Men on cycles, lean-faced,\nunkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unhoped\ndeliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair.  And for\nthe food!  Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the\nAtlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief.  All the\nshipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days.  But of\nall this I have no memory.  I drifted--a demented man.  I found myself\nin a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day\nwandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood.\nThey have told me since that I was singing some insane doggerel about\n\"The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah!  The Last Man Left Alive!\"  Troubled\nas they were with their own affairs, these people, whose name, much as\nI would like to express my gratitude to them, I may not even give\nhere, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and\nprotected me from myself.  Apparently they had learned something of my\nstory from me during the days of my lapse.\n\nVery gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me\nwhat they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead.  Two days after I\nwas imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a\nMartian.  He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any\nprovocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness\nof power.\n\nI was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me.  I was a lonely\nman and a sad one, and they bore with me.  I remained with them four\ndays after my recovery.  All that time I felt a vague, a growing\ncraving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that\nseemed so happy and bright in my past.  It was a mere hopeless desire\nto feast upon my misery.  They dissuaded me.  They did all they could\nto divert me from this morbidity.  But at last I could resist the\nimpulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and\nparting, as I will confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I\nwent out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and\nstrange and empty.\n\nAlready they were busy with returning people; in places even there\nwere shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water.\n\nI remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my\nmelancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the\nstreets and vivid the moving life about me.  So many people were\nabroad everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed\nincredible that any great proportion of the population could have been\nslain.  But then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I\nmet, how shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes,\nand that every other man still wore his dirty rags.  Their faces\nseemed all with one of two expressions--a leaping exultation and\nenergy or a grim resolution.  Save for the expression of the faces,\nLondon seemed a city of tramps.  The vestries were indiscriminately\ndistributing bread sent us by the French government.  The ribs of the\nfew horses showed dismally.  Haggard special constables with white\nbadges stood at the corners of every street.  I saw little of the\nmischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street,\nand there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of\nWaterloo Bridge.\n\nAt the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts\nof that grotesque time--a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket\nof the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place.  It was\nthe placard of the first newspaper to resume publication--the _Daily\nMail_.  I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket.\nMost of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing\nhad amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement\nstereo on the back page.  The matter he printed was emotional; the\nnews organisation had not as yet found its way back.  I learned\nnothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the\nMartian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results.  Among other\nthings, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time,\nthat the \"Secret of Flying,\" was discovered.  At Waterloo I found the\nfree trains that were taking people to their homes.  The first rush\nwas already over.  There were few people in the train, and I was in no\nmood for casual conversation.  I got a compartment to myself, and sat\nwith folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed\npast the windows.  And just outside the terminus the train jolted over\ntemporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were\nblackened ruins.  To Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy\nwith powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms\nand rain, and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again;\nthere were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by\nside with the customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty\nrelaying.\n\nAll down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt\nand unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered.  Walton, by virtue\nof its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along\nthe line.  The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped\nmass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled\ncabbage.  The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons\nof the red climber.  Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in\ncertain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the\nsixth cylinder.  A number of people were standing about it, and some\nsappers were busy in the midst of it.  Over it flaunted a Union Jack,\nflapping cheerfully in the morning breeze.  The nursery grounds were\neverywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut\nwith purple shadows, and very painful to the eye.  One's gaze went\nwith infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the\nforeground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills.\n\nThe line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing\nrepair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to\nMaybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the\nhussars, and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in\nthe thunderstorm.  Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find,\namong a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the\nwhitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed.  For a time I stood\nregarding these vestiges. . . .\n\nThen I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here\nand there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found\nburial, and so came home past the College Arms.  A man standing at an\nopen cottage door greeted me by name as I passed.\n\nI looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded\nimmediately.  The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening\nslowly as I approached.\n\nIt slammed again.  The curtains of my study fluttered out of the\nopen window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn.  No\none had closed it since.  The smashed bushes were just as I had left\nthem nearly four weeks ago.  I stumbled into the hall, and the house\nfelt empty.  The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had\ncrouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the\ncatastrophe.  Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.\n\nI followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table\nstill, with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had\nleft on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder.  For a space I\nstood reading over my abandoned arguments.  It was a paper on the\nprobable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the\ncivilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a\nprophecy: \"In about two hundred years,\" I had written, \"we may\nexpect----\"  The sentence ended abruptly.  I remembered my inability\nto fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had\nbroken off to get my _Daily Chronicle_ from the newsboy.  I remembered\nhow I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had\nlistened to his odd story of \"Men from Mars.\"\n\nI came down and went into the dining room.  There were the mutton\nand the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle\noverturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them.  My home was\ndesolate.  I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so\nlong.  And then a strange thing occurred.  \"It is no use,\" said a\nvoice.  \"The house is deserted.  No one has been here these ten days.\nDo not stay here to torment yourself.  No one escaped but you.\"\n\nI was startled.  Had I spoken my thought aloud?  I turned, and the\nFrench window was open behind me.  I made a step to it, and stood\nlooking out.\n\nAnd there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid,\nwere my cousin and my wife--my wife white and tearless.  She gave a\nfaint cry.\n\n\"I came,\" she said.  \"I knew--knew----\"\n\nShe put her hand to her throat--swayed.  I made a step forward, and\ncaught her in my arms.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER TEN\n\nTHE EPILOGUE\n\n\nI cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little\nI am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable\nquestions which are still unsettled.  In one respect I shall certainly\nprovoke criticism.  My particular province is speculative philosophy.\nMy knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two,\nbut it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the\nrapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as\na proven conclusion.  I have assumed that in the body of my narrative.\n\nAt any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined\nafter the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial\nspecies were found.  That they did not bury any of their dead, and the\nreckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance\nof the putrefactive process.  But probable as this seems, it is by no\nmeans a proven conclusion.\n\nNeither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the\nMartians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the\nHeat-Rays remains a puzzle.  The terrible disasters at the Ealing\nand South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further\ninvestigations upon the latter.  Spectrum analysis of the black powder\npoints unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a\nbrilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that\nit combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with\ndeadly effect upon some constituent in the blood.  But such unproven\nspeculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to\nwhom this story is addressed.  None of the brown scum that drifted\ndown the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at\nthe time, and now none is forthcoming.\n\nThe results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far\nas the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have\nalready given.  But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and\nalmost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and\nthe countless drawings that have been made from it; and beyond that\nthe interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific.\n\nA question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of\nanother attack from the Martians.  I do not think that nearly enough\nattention is being given to this aspect of the matter.  At present the\nplanet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I,\nfor one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure.  In any case, we\nshould be prepared.  It seems to me that it should be possible to\ndefine the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to\nkeep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate\nthe arrival of the next attack.\n\nIn that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or\nartillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge,\nor they might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw\nopened.  It seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the\nfailure of their first surprise.  Possibly they see it in the same\nlight.\n\nLessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the\nMartians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet\nVenus.  Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with\nthe sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view\nof an observer on Venus.  Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous\nmarking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and\nalmost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character\nwas detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk.  One needs to see\nthe drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their\nremarkable resemblance in character.\n\nAt any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views\nof the human future must be greatly modified by these events.  We have\nlearned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a\nsecure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good\nor evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space.  It may be that\nin the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not\nwithout its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene\nconfidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of\ndecadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and\nit has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of\nmankind.  It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians\nhave watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their\nlesson, and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer\nsettlement.  Be that as it may, for many years yet there will\ncertainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk,\nand those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with\nthem as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.\n\nThe broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be\nexaggerated.  Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion\nthat through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty\nsurface of our minute sphere.  Now we see further.  If the Martians\ncan reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is\nimpossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this\nearth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread\nof life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our\nsister planet within its toils.\n\nDim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of\nlife spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system\nthroughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space.  But that is a\nremote dream.  It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of\nthe Martians is only a reprieve.  To them, and not to us, perhaps, is\nthe future ordained.\n\nI must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an\nabiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind.  I sit in my study\nwriting by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley\nbelow set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me\nempty and desolate.  I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass\nme, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a\nbicycle, children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and\nunreal, and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot,\nbrooding silence.  Of a night I see the black powder darkening the\nsilent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they\nrise upon me tattered and dog-bitten.  They gibber and grow fiercer,\npaler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold\nand wretched, in the darkness of the night.\n\nI go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the\nStrand, and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of\nthe past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched,\ngoing to and fro, phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a\ngalvanised body.  And strange, too, it is to stand on Primrose Hill,\nas I did but a day before writing this last chapter, to see the great\nprovince of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the smoke and\nmist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people\nwalking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the\nsight-seers about the Martian machine that stands there still, to hear\nthe tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when I saw it\nall bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn of that last\ngreat day. . . .\n\nAnd strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think\nthat I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead."