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The War of the Worlds

by H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells [1898]

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be

inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the

World? . . . And how are all things made for man?--

KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

BOOK ONE

THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

CHAPTER ONE

THE EVE OF THE WAR

No one would have believed in the last years of the

nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly

and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as

mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their

various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps

almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scru-

tinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a

drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and

fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their

assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the

infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave

a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human

danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life

upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall

some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most

terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars,

perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a mis-

sionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that

are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish,

intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this

earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their

plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came

the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, re-

volves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles,

and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half

of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular

hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long

before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface

must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely

one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated

its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It

has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of

animated existence.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no

writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, ex-

pressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed

there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was

it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth,

with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter

from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more

distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet

has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical

condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that

even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely

approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more

attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover

but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge

snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically

inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion,

which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-

day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate

pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged

their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across

space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have

scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only

35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope,

our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with

water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with

glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches

of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must

be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys

and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits

that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would

seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars.

Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still

crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard

as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their

only escape from the destruction that, generation after gener-

ation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remem-

ber what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has

wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison

and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians,

in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of

existence in a war of extermination waged by European immi-

grants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of

mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same

spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with

amazing subtlety--their mathematical learning is evidently

far in excess of ours--and to have carried out their prepara-

tions with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instru-

ments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble

far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli

watched the red planet--it is odd, by-the-bye, that for count-

less centuries Mars has been the star of war--but failed to

interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they

mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been

getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on

the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory,

then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English

readers heard of it first in the issue of NATURE dated August 2.

I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the

casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet,

from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as

yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak

during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars

approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the

astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelli-

gence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet.

It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the

spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a

mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an

enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had

become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared

it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted

out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day

there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in

the DAILY TELEGRAPH, and the world went in ignorance of one

of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race.

I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met

Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was

immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feel-

ings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a

scrutiny of the red planet.

In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember

that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory,

the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor

in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the tele-

scope, the little slit in the roof--an oblong profundity with

the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible

but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle

of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the

field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and

still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly

flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so

silvery warm--a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered,

but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity

of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller

and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye

was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more than

forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the im-

mensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe

swims.

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of

light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around

it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know

how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a tele-

scope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because

it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards

me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every min-

ute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were

sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and

calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then

as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring

missile.

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from

the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the

slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer

struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my

place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went

stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the dark-

ness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy

exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to

the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four

hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table

there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson

swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke

by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had

seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched

till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and

walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were

Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people,

sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition

of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having in-

habitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites

might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that

a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out

to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken

the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a

million to one," he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the

night after about midnight, and again the night after; and

so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased

after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain.

It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians in-

convenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through

a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating

patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmos-

phere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at

last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere

concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodi-

cal PUNCH, I remember, made a happy use of it in the

political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those missiles the

Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a

pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of

space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It

seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with

that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their

petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham

was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the

illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these

latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise

of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was

much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy

upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments

of moral ideas as civilisation progressed.

One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been

10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It

was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to

her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping

zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed.

It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists

from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing

music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses

as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the

distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and

rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My

wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and

yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky.

It seemed so safe and tranquil.

CHAPTER TWO

THE FALLING STAR

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen

early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a

line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have

seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Albin de-

scribed it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed

for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on meteor-

ites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about

ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell

to earth about one hundred miles east of him.

I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and

although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and

the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at

the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all

things that ever came to earth from outer space must have

fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only

looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say

it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing

of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex

must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought

that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have

troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen

the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay

somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and

Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did,

soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enormous

hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the

sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction

over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away.

The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke

rose against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst

the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to frag-

ments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance

of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a

thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of

about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at

the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites

are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still

so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near

approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to

the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had

not occurred to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the

Thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance,

astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and colour, and

dimly perceiving even then some evidence of design in its

arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun,

just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already

warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning,

there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds

were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder.

He was all alone on the common.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the

grey clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite,

was falling off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping

off in flakes and raining down upon the sand. A large piece

suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought

his heart into his mouth.

For a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and,

although the heat was excessive, he clambered down into

the pit close to the bulk to see the Thing more clearly. He

fancied even then that the cooling of the body might account

for this, but what disturbed that idea was the fact that the

ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.

And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top

of the cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a

gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing

that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago

was now at the other side of the circumference. Even then

he scarcely understood what this indicated, until he heard a

muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward

an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The

cylinder was artificial--hollow--with an end that screwed

out! Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in it--men

in it! Half roasted to death! Trying to escape!"

At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing

with the flash upon Mars.

The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to

him that he forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder

to help turn. But luckily the dull radiation arrested him before

he could burn his hands on the still-glowing metal. At that

he stood irresolute for a moment, then turned, scrambled out

of the pit, and set off running wildly into Woking. The time

then must have been somewhere about six o'clock. He met a

waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale

he told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen

off in the pit--that the man simply drove on. He was equally

unsuccessful with the potman who was just unlocking the

doors of the public-house by Horsell Bridge. The fellow

thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful

attempt to shut him into the taproom. That sobered him a

little; and when he saw Henderson, the London journalist,

in his garden, he called over the palings and made himself

understood.

"Henderson," he called, "you saw that shooting star last

night?"

"Well?" said Henderson.

"It's out on Horsell Common now."

"Good Lord!" said Henderson. "Fallen meteorite! That's

good."

"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder

--an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside."

Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.

"What's that?" he said. He was deaf in one ear.

Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a

minute or so taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched

up his jacket, and came out into the road. The two men

hurried back at once to the common, and found the cylinder

still lying in the same position. But now the sounds inside

had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between

the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either entering

or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.

They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a

stick, and, meeting with no response, they both concluded

the man or men inside must be insensible or dead.

Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They

shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the

town again to get help. One can imagine them, covered

with sand, excited and disordered, running up the little

street in the bright sunlight just as the shop folks were

taking down their shutters and people were opening their

bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway station

at once, in order to telegraph the news to London. The

newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the re-

ception of the idea.

By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men

had already started for the common to see the "dead men from

Mars." That was the form the story took. I heard of it first

from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when I went out

to get my DAILY CHRONICLE. I was naturally startled, and

lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge

to the sand pits.

CHAPTER THREE

ON HORSELL COMMON

I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people sur-

rounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay. I have

already described the appearance of that colossal bulk, em-

bedded in the ground. The turf and gravel about it seemed

charred as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt its impact

had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not

there. I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for

the present, and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson's

house.

There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the

Pit, with their feet dangling, and amusing themselves--until

I stopped them--by throwing stones at the giant mass.

After I had spoken to them about it, they began playing at

"touch" in and out of the group of bystanders.

Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener

I employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the

butcher and his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf

caddies who were accustomed to hang about the railway

station. There was very little talking. Few of the common

people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical

ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at

the big tablelike end of the cylinder, which was still as

Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I fancy the popular ex-

pectation of a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at

this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was there, and

other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I

heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly

ceased to rotate.

It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness

of this object was at all evident to me. At the first glance

it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage

or a tree blown across the road. Not so much so, indeed. It

looked like a rusty gas float. It required a certain amount of

scientific education to perceive that the grey scale of the

Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white metal

that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder

had an unfamiliar hue. "Extra-terrestrial" had no meaning for

most of the onlookers.

At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the

Thing had come from the planet Mars, but I judged it

improbable that it contained any living creature. I thought

the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite of Ogilvy, I

still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran

fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript,

on the difficulties in translation that might arise, whether

we should find coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it

was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an

impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing

seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to

my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work

upon my abstract investigations.

In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered

very much. The early editions of the evening papers had

startled London with enormous headlines:

"A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS."

"REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,"

and so forth. In addition, Ogilvy's wire to the Astronomical

Exchange had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms.

There were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking

station standing in the road by the sand pits, a basket-

chaise from Chobham, and a rather lordly carriage. Besides

that, there was quite a heap of bicycles. In addition, a

large number of people must have walked, in spite of the

heat of the day, from Woking and Chertsey, so that there was

altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily

dressed ladies among the others.

It was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath

of wind, and the only shadow was that of the few scattered

pine trees. The burning heather had been extinguished, but

the level ground towards Ottershaw was blackened as far as

one could see, and still giving off vertical streamers of

smoke. An enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in the Chobham

Road had sent up his son with a barrow-load of green

apples and ginger beer.

Going to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a

group of about half a dozen men--Henderson, Ogilvy, and

a tall, fair-haired man that I afterwards learned was Stent,

the Astronomer Royal, with several workmen wielding spades

and pickaxes. Stent was giving directions in a clear, high-

pitched voice. He was standing on the cylinder, which was

now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson and stream-

ing with perspiration, and something seemed to have irritated

him.

A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered,

though its lower end was still embedded. As soon as Ogilvy

saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit

he called to me to come down, and asked me if I would

mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of the manor.

The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious

impediment to their excavations, especially the boys. They

wanted a light railing put up, and help to keep the people

back. He told me that a faint stirring was occasionally still

audible within the case, but that the workmen had failed

to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them. The

case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible

that the faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult

in the interior.

I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of

the privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure.

I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told

he was expected from London by the six o'clock train from

Waterloo; and as it was then about a quarter past five, I

went home, had some tea, and walked up to the station

to waylay him.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CYLINDER OPENS

When I returned to the common the sun was setting.

Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking,

and one or two persons were returning. The crowd about

the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon

yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, perhaps.

There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared

to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed

through my mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent's voice:

"Keep back! Keep back!"

A boy came running towards me.

"It's a-movin'," he said to me as he passed; "a-screwin' and

a-screwin' out. I don't like it. I'm a-goin' 'ome, I am."

I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think,

two or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one an-

other, the one or two ladies there being by no means the

least active.

"He's fallen in the pit!" cried some one.

"Keep back!" said several.

The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through.

Every one seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar hum-

ming sound from the pit.

"I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We

don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!"

I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe

he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out

of the hole again. The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within.

Nearly two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blun-

dered against me, and I narrowly missed being pitched onto

the top of the screw. I turned, and as I did so the screw must

have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel

with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into the person

behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again.

For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black.

I had the sunset in my eyes.

I think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly

something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essen-

tials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw some-

thing stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements,

one above another, and then two luminous disks--like eyes.

Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the

thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing

middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then

another.

A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek

from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed

upon the cylinder still, from which other tentacles were now

projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge

of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the

faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclama-

tions on all sides. There was a general movement backwards.

I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I

found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of

the pit running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the

cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petri-

fied and staring.

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear,

was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As

it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet

leather.

Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me stead-

fastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was

rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth

under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and

panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and

pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped

the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely

imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar

V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of

brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike

lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon

groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in

a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness

of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the

earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense

eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and

monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown

skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedi-

ous movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first en-

counter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and

dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the

brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like

the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar

thick cry, and forthwith another of these creatures appeared

darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture.

I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of

trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly

and stumbling, for I could not avert my face from these

things.

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I

stopped, panting, and waited further developments. The

common round the sand pits was dotted with people, stand-

ing like myself in a half-fascinated terror, staring at these

creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit

in which they lay. And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a

round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the

pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but

showing as a little black object against the hot western sun.

Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed

to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly he van-

ished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached

me. I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him

that my fears overruled.

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep

pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had

made. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Wo-

king would have been amazed at the sight--a dwindling mul-

titude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a

great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates

and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short,

excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of

sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black

against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of

deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags

or pawing the ground.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAT-RAY

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging

from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from

their planet, a kind of fascination paralysed my actions. I

remained standing knee-deep in the heather, staring at the

mound that hid them. I was a battleground of fear and

curiosity.

I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a pas-

sionate longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in

a big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually

looking at the sand heaps that hid these new-comers to our

earth. Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an

octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately with-

drawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint,

bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling

motion. What could be going on there?

Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups

--one a little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of

people in the direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared

my mental conflict. There were few near me. One man I

approached--he was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine,

though I did not know his name--and accosted. But it was

scarcely a time for articulate conversation.

"What ugly brutes!" he said. "Good God! What ugly

brutes!" He repeated this over and over again.

"Did you see a man in the pit?" I said; but he made no

answer to that. We became silent, and stood watching for a

time side by side, deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one

another's company. Then I shifted my position to a little

knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more of eleva-

tion and when I looked for him presently he was walking

towards Woking.

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further hap-

pened. The crowd far away on the left, towards Woking,

seemed to grow, and I heard now a faint murmur from it.

The little knot of people towards Chobham dispersed. There

was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.

It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage,

and I suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to

restore confidence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow,

intermittent movement upon the sand pits began, a move-

ment that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the eve-

ning about the cylinder remained unbroken. Vertical black

figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch,

and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin

irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its

attenuated horns. I, too, on my side began to move towards

the pit.

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly

into the sand pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the

gride of wheels. I saw a lad trundling off the barrow of

apples. And then, within thirty yards of the pit, advancing

from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little black knot of

men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consulta-

tion, and since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their

repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to

show them, by approaching them with signals, that we too

were intelligent.

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to

the left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but

afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were

with others in this attempt at communication. This little

group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the

circumference of the now almost complete circle of people,

and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet

distances.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of

luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct

puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the

still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word

for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the

hazy stretches of brown common towards Chertsey, set with

black pine trees, seemed to darken abruptly as these puffs

arose, and to remain the darker after their dispersal. At the

same time a faint hissing sound became audible.

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the

white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little

knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground.

As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green,

and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed

into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a

humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam

of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping

from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men.

It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and

flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly

and momentarily turned to fire.

Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them

staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to

run.

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death

leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I

felt was that it was something very strange. An almost noise-

less and blinding flash of light, and a man fell headlong and

lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them,

pine trees burst into fire, and every dry furze bush became

with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away towards

Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden

buildings suddenly set alight.

It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming

death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it

coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and

was too astounded and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle

of fire in the sand pits and the sudden squeal of a horse that

was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as if an invisible yet

intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather

between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line

beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled.

Something fell with a crash far away to the left where the

road from Woking station opens out on the common. Forth-

with the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, dome-

like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood

motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light.

Had that death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably

have slain me in my surprise. But it passed and spared me,

and left the night about me suddenly dark and un-

familiar.

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to

blackness, except where its roadways lay grey and pale under

the deep blue sky of the early night. It was dark, and sud-

denly void of men. Overhead the stars were mustering, and

in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish

blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came

out sharp and black against the western afterglow. The Mar-

tians and their appliances were altogether invisible, save for

that thin mast upon which their restless mirror wobbled.

Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and

glowed still, and the houses towards Woking station were

sending up spires of flame into the stillness of the evening

air.

Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonish-

ment. The little group of black specks with the flag of white

had been swept out of existence, and the stillness of the

evening, so it seemed to me, had scarcely been broken.

It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless,

unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon

me from without, came--fear.

With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through

the heather.

The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not

only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about

me. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had

that I ran weeping silently as a child might do. Once I had

turned, I did not dare to look back.

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was

being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very

verge of safety, this mysterious death--as swift as the passage

of light--would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder

and strike me down.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD

It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able

to slay men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in

some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a

chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. This intense

heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they

choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown

composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse

projects a beam of light. But no one has absolutely proved

these details. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of

heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead

of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame

at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and

melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that

explodes into steam.

That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about

the pit, charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all

night long the common from Horsell to Maybury was deserted

and brightly ablaze.

The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham,

Woking, and Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the

shops had closed when the tragedy happened, and a number

of people, shop people and so forth, attracted by the stories

they had heard, were walking over the Horsell Bridge and

along the road between the hedges that runs out at last upon

the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up

after the labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they

would make any novelty, the excuse for walking together and

enjoying a trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself the

hum of voices along the road in the gloaming. . . .

As yet, of course, few people in Woking even knew that

the cylinder had opened, though poor Henderson had sent a

messenger on a bicycle to the post office with a special wire

to an evening paper.

As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open,

they found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering

at the spinning mirror over the sand pits, and the new-comers

were, no doubt, soon infected by the excitement of the oc-

casion.

By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed,

there may have been a crowd of three hundred people or

more at this place, besides those who had left the road to

approach the Martians nearer. There were three policemen

too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under

instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter

them from approaching the cylinder. There was some booing

from those more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a

crowd is always an occasion for noise and horse-play.

Stent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a

collision, had telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as

soon as the Martians emerged, for the help of a company of

soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence.

After that they returned to lead that ill-fated advance. The

description of their death, as it was seen by the crowd, tallies

very closely with my own impressions: the three puffs of

green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of

flame.

But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than

mine. Only the fact that a hummock of heathery sand inter-

cepted the lower part of the Heat-Ray saved them. Had the

elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few yards higher,

none could have lived to tell the tale. They saw the flashes

and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were, lit the

bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. Then,

with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit,

the beam swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of

the beech trees that line the road, and splitting the bricks,

smashing the windows, firing the window frames, and bring-

ing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the gable of the

house nearest the corner.

In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees,

the panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly

for some moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall

into the road, and single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and

dresses caught fire. Then came a crying from the common.

There were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a mounted

policeman came galloping through the confusion with his

hands clasped over his head, screaming.

"They're coming!" a woman shrieked, and incontinently

everyone was turning and pushing at those behind, in order

to clear their way to Woking again. They must have bolted

as blindly as a flock of sheep. Where the road grows narrow

and black between the high banks the crowd jammed, and a

desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not escape;

three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were

crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror

and the darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HOW I REACHED HOME

For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight

except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling

through the heather. All about me gathered the invisible

terrors of the Martians; that pitiless sword of heat seemed

whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended

and smote me out of life. I came into the road between the

crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.

At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the

violence of my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and

fell by the wayside. That was near the bridge that crosses

the canal by the gasworks. I fell and lay still.

I must have remained there some time.

I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I

could not clearly understand how I came there. My terror

had fallen from me like a garment. My hat had gone, and

my collar had burst away from its fastener. A few minutes

before, there had only been three real things before me--the

immensity of the night and space and nature, my own feeble-

ness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it

was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered

abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of

mind to the other. I was immediately the self of every day

again--a decent, ordinary citizen. The silent common, the

impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as if they had

been in a dream. I asked myself had these latter things indeed

happened? I could not credit it.

I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the

bridge. My mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves

seemed drained of their strength. I dare say I staggered

drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a

workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little

boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to

speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a

meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge.

Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of

white, firelit smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows,

went flying south--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone.

A dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses

in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental

Terrace. It was all so real and so familiar. And that behind

me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I told myself,

could not be.

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know

how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the

strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world

about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from some-

where inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out

of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very

strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my

dream.

But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity

and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There

was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric

lamps were all alight. I stopped at the group of people.

"What news from the common?" said I.

There were two men and a woman at the gate.

"Eh?" said one of the men, turning.

"What news from the common?" I said.

"'Ain't yer just BEEN there?" asked the men.

"People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman

over the gate. "What's it all abart?"

"Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the

creatures from Mars?"

"Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks";

and all three of them laughed.

I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell

them what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken

sentences.

"You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home.

I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went

into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so

soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things

I had seen. The dinner, which was a cold one, had already

been served, and remained neglected on the table while I

told my story.

"There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had

aroused; "they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl.

They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them,

but they cannot get out of it. . . . But the horror of them!"

"Don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting

her hand on mine.

"Poor Ogilvy!" I said. "To think he may be lying dead

there!"

My wife at least did not find my experience incredible.

When I saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.

"They may come here," she said again and again.

I pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her.

"They can scarcely move," I said.

I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that

Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians estab-

lishing themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on

the gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the

force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of

Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more

than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same.

His own body would be a cope of lead to him. That, indeed,

was the general opinion. Both THE TIMES and the DAILY

TELEGRAPH, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and

both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influ-

ences.

The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far

more oxygen or far less argon (whichever way one likes to

put it) than does Mars. The invigorating influences of this

excess of oxygen upon the Martians indisputably did much

to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. And,

in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such

mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite

able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.

But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my

reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders.

With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and

the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible

degrees courageous and secure.

"They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my

wineglass. "They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are

mad with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living

things--certainly no intelligent living things.

"A shell in the pit" said I, "if the worst comes to the worst

will kill them all."

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my

perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that

dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear

wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink

lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table

furniture--for in those days even philosophical writers had

many little luxuries--the crimson-purple wine in my glass,

are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, temper-

ing nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and

denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have

lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful

of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them

to death tomorrow, my dear."

I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner

I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FRIDAY NIGHT

The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the

strange and wonderful things that happened upon that

Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of

our social order with the first beginnings of the series of

events that was to topple that social order headlong. If on

Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a

circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand pits,

I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it,

unless it were some relation of Stent or of the three or four

cyclists or London people lying dead on the common, whose

emotions or habits were at all affected by the new-comers.

Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked

about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the

sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.

In London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing

the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard,

and his evening paper, after wiring for authentication from

him and receiving no reply--the man was killed--decided

not to print a special edition.

Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people

were inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men

and women to whom I spoke. All over the district people

were dining and supping; working men were gardening after

the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young

people were wandering through the lanes love-making, stu-

dents sat over their books.

Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel

and dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there

a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences,

caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to

and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working,

eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done for count-

less years--as though no planet Mars existed in the sky.

Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was

the case.

In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping

and going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers

were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding

in the most ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching

on Smith's monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's

news. The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the

engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of

"Men from Mars!" Excited men came into the station about

nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more

disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling

Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage

windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark

dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a

thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that

nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening. It was

only round the edge of the common that any disturbance

was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas burning on

the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the

common side of the three villages, and the people there kept

awake till dawn.

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and

going but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and

Horsell bridges. One or two adventurous souls, it was after-

wards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near

the Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a

light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept the

common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for

such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and

the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars,

and all the next day. A noise of hammering from the pit was

heard by many people.

So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the

centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a

poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely

working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common,

smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen

objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. Here and

there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of

excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation

had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of

life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The

fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden

nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring,

sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines they

were making ready, and ever and again a puff of greenish-

white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.

About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell,

and deployed along the edge of the common to form a

cordon. Later a second company marched through Chobham

to deploy on the north side of the common. Several officers

from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier

in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.

The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge

and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight. The military

authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the busi-

ness. About eleven, the next morning's papers were able to

say, a squadron of hussars, two Maxims, and about four

hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started from Aldershot.

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey

road, Woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine

woods to the northwest. It had a greenish colour, and caused

a silent brightness like summer lightning. This was the second

cylinder.

CHAPTER NINE

THE FIGHTING BEGINS

Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It

was a day of lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a

rapidly fluctuating barometer. I had slept but little, though

my wife had succeeded in sleeping, and I rose early. I went

into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but

towards the common there was nothing stirring but a lark.

The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his

chariot and I went round to the side gate to ask the latest

news. He told me that during the night the Martians had

been surrounded by troops, and that guns were expected.

Then--a familiar, reassuring note--I heard a train running

towards Woking.

"They aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can

possibly be avoided."

I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a

time, and then strolled in to breakfast. It was a most un-

exceptional morning. My neighbour was of opinion that the

troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians

during the day.

"It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he

said. "It would be curious to know how they live on another

planet; we might learn a thing or two."

He came up to the fence and extended a handful of straw-

berries, for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusi-

astic. At the same time he told me of the burning of the pine

woods about the Byfleet Golf Links.

"They say," said he, "that there's another of those blessed

things fallen there--number two. But one's enough, surely.

This lot'll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before

everything's settled." He laughed with an air of the greatest

good humour as he said this. The woods, he said, were still

burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me. "They will

be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of

pine needles and turf," he said, and then grew serious over

"poor Ogilvy."

After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk

down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I found

a group of soldiers--sappers, I think, men in small round

caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue

shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told

me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the

road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men

standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for a

time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous

evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had

but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with

questions. They said that they did not know who had

authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that

a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary

sapper is a great deal better educated than the common

soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the

possible fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray

to them, and they began to argue among themselves.

"Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one.

"Get aht!," said another. "What's cover against this 'ere

'eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near

as the ground'll let us, and then drive a trench."

"Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought

to ha" been born a rabbit Snippy."

"'Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly--

a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.

I repeated my description.

"Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about

fishers of men--fighters of fish it is this time!"

"It ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first

speaker.

"Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?"

said the little dark man. "You carn tell what they might do."

"Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't

no time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once."

So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went

on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as

I could.

But I will not weary the reader with a description of that

long morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed

in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and

Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military

authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn't know anything;

the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found people

in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military,

and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist,

that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers

had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and

leave their houses.

I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have

said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to

refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half

past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening

paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very

inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson,

Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn't know.

The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They

seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering

and an almost continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently they

were busy getting ready for a struggle. "Fresh attempts have

been made to signal, but without success," was the stereo-

typed formula of the papers. A sapper told me it was done by

a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The Martians

took as much notice of such advances as we should of the

lowing of a cow.

I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this

preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became bel-

ligerent, and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways;

something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism

came back. It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time.

They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs.

About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at

measured intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned

that the smouldering pine wood into which the second cylin-

der had fallen was being shelled, in the hope of destroying

that object before it opened. It was only about five, however,

that a field gun reached Chobham for use against the first

body of Martians.

About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in

the summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was

lowering upon us, I heard a muffled detonation from the

common, and immediately after a gust of firing. Close on

the heels of that came a violent rattling crash, quite close

to us, that shook the ground; and, starting out upon the lawn,

I saw the tops of the trees about the Oriental College burst

into smoky red flame, and the tower of the little church beside

it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the mosque had

vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as if

a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it. One of our

chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece

of it came clattering down the tiles and made a heap of

broken red fragments upon the flower bed by my study

window.

I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realised that the crest

of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians" Heat-

Ray now that the college was cleared out of the way.

At that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony

ran her out into the road. Then I fetched out the servant,

telling her I would go upstairs myself for the box she was

clamouring for.

"We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the

firing reopened for a moment upon the common.

"But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror.

I thought perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at

Leatherhead.

"Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise.

She looked away from me downhill. The people were

coming out of their houses, astonished.

"How are we to get to Leatherhead?" she said.

Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the

railway bridge; three galloped through the open gates of

the Oriental College; two others dismounted, and began

running from house to house. The sun, shining through the

smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood

red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.

"Stop here," said I; "you are safe here"; and I started off

at once for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a

horse and dog cart. I ran, for I perceived that in a moment

everyone upon this side of the hill would be moving. I found

him in his bar, quite unaware of what was going on behind

his house. A man stood with his back to me, talking to him.

"I must have a pound," said the landlord, "and I've no

one to drive it."

"I'll give you two," said I, over the stranger's shoulder.

"What for?"

"And I'll bring it back by midnight," I said.

"Lord!" said the landlord; "what's the hurry? I'm selling

my bit of a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What's

going on now?"

I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so

secured the dog cart. At the time it did not seem to me nearly

so urgent that the landlord should leave his. I took care to

have the cart there and then, drove it off down the road, and,

leaving it in charge of my wife and servant, rushed into my

house and packed a few valuables, such plate as we had, and

so forth. The beech trees below the house were burning while

I did this, and the palings up the road glowed red. While I

was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came

running up. He was going from house to house, warning peo-

ple to leave. He was going on as I came out of my front

door, lugging my treasures, done up in a tablecloth. I shouted

after him:

"What news?"

He turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out

in a thing like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate of the

house at the crest. A sudden whirl of black smoke driving

across the road hid him for a moment. I ran to my neighbour's

door and rapped to satisfy myself of what I already knew, that

his wife had gone to London with him and had locked up

their house. I went in again, according to my promise, to get

my servant's box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the

tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped

up into the driver's seat beside my wife. In another moment

we were clear of the smoke and noise, and spanking down the

opposite slope of Maybury Hill towards Old Woking.

In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead

on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its

swinging sign. I saw the doctor's cart ahead of me. At the

bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the hillside I

was leaving. Thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads

of red fire were driving up into the still air, and throwing

dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. The smoke

already extended far away to the east and west--to the By-

fleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The

road was dotted with people running towards us. And very

faint now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one

heard the whirr of a machine-gun that was presently stilled,

and an intermittent cracking of rifles. Apparently the Mar-

tians were setting fire to everything within range of their

Heat-Ray.

I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn

my attention to the horse. When I looked back again the

second hill had hidden the black smoke. I slashed the horse

with the whip, and gave him a loose rein until Woking and

Send lay between us and that quivering tumult. I overtook

and passed the doctor between Woking and Send.

CHAPTER TEN

IN THE STORM

Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill.

The scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows

beyond Pyrford, and the hedges on either side were sweet

and gay with multitudes of dog-roses. The heavy firing that

had broken out while we were driving down Maybury Hill

ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very peace-

ful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure

about nine o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while

I took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to

their care.

My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and

seemed oppressed with forebodings of evil. I talked to her

reassuringly, pointing out that the Martians were tied to the

Pit by sheer heaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl

a little out of it; but she answered only in monosyllables. Had

it not been for my promise to the innkeeper, she would, I

think, have urged me to stay in Leatherhead that night. Would

that I had! Her face, I remember, was very white as we

parted.

For my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day.

Something very like the war fever that occasionally runs

through a civilised community had got into my blood, and

in my heart I was not so very sorry that I had to return to

Maybury that night. I was even afraid that that last fusillade

I had heard might mean the extermination of our invaders

from Mars. I can best express my state of mind by saying

that I wanted to be in at the death.

It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night

was unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the lighted

passage of my cousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and

it was as hot and close as the day. Overhead the clouds were

driving fast, albeit not a breath stirred the shrubs about us.

My cousins' man lit both lamps. Happily, I knew the road

intimately. My wife stood in the light of the doorway, and

watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then

abruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by

side wishing me good hap.

I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my

wife's fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the

Martians. At that time I was absolutely in the dark as to

the course of the evening's fighting. I did not know even the

circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. As I came

through Ockham (for that was the way I returned, and not

through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western

horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept

slowly up the sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunder-

storm mingled there with masses of black and red smoke.

Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window

or so the village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly

escaped an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford,

where a knot of people stood with their backs to me. They

said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they

knew of the things happening beyond the hill, nor do I know

if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely,

or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the

terror of the night.

From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the

valley of the Wey, and the red glare was hidden from me.

As I ascended the little hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare

came into view again, and the trees about me shivered with

the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. Then I

heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford Church behind me,

and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its tree-

tops and roofs black and sharp against the red.

Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about

me and showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt

a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been

pierced as it were by a thread of green fire, suddenly lighting

their confusion and falling into the field to my left. It was

the third falling star!

Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast,

danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the

thunder burst like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit

between his teeth and bolted.

A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill,

and down this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun,

it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever

seen. The thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another

and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more

like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual

detonating reverberations. The flickering light was blinding

and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as

I drove down the slope.

At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then

abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was

moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At

first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash

following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement.

It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and

then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage

near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees,

and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and

bright.

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous

tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young

pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking

engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather;

articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering

tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.

A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with

two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly

as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer.

Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently

along the ground? That was the impression those instant

flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a

great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me

were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting

through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong,

and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed,

headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it!

At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether.

Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head hard

round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had

heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and

I was flung sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of

water.

I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet

still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay

motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the

lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog

cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In

another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by

me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.

Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was

no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was,

with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering

tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging

and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it

went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted

it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head

looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of

white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of

green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the

monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the

lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.

As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that

drowned the thunder--"Aloo! Aloo!"--and in another minute

it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over

something in the field. I have no doubt this Thing in the field

was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from

Mars.

For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness

watching, by the intermittent light, these monstrous beings

of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops.

A thin hail was now beginning, and as it came and went their

figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. Now

and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed

them up.

I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below.

It was some time before my blank astonishment would let

me struggle up the bank to a drier position, or think at all of

my imminent peril.

Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of

wood, surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled

to my feet at last, and, crouching and making use of every

chance of cover, I made a run for this. I hammered at the

door, but I could not make the people hear (if there were

any people inside), and after a time I desisted, and, availing

myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded

in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into

the pine woods towards Maybury.

Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now,

towards my own house. I walked among the trees trying to

find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood, for

the lightning was now becoming infrequent, and the hail,

which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in columns through

the gaps in the heavy foliage.

If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had

seen I should have immediately worked my way round through

Byfleet to Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife

at Leatherhead. But that night the strangeness of things about

me, and my physical wretchedness, prevented me, for I was

bruised, weary, wet to the skin, deafened and blinded by

the storm.

I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and

that was as much motive as I had. I staggered through the

trees, fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plank,

and finally splashed out into the lane that ran down from

the College Arms. I say splashed, for the storm water was

sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy torrent. There

in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling

back.

He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on

before I could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him.

So heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that

I had the hardest task to win my way up the hill. I went close

up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its

palings.

Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a

flash of lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broad-

cloth and a pair of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly

how the man lay, the flicker of light had passed. I stood over

him waiting for the next flash. When it came, I saw that he

was a sturdy man, cheaply but not shabbily dressed; his head

was bent under his body, and he lay crumpled up close to

the fence, as though he had been flung violently against it.

Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never

before touched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over

to feel for his heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck

had been broken. The lightning flashed for a third time, and

his face leaped upon me. I sprang to my feet. It was the

landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose conveyance I had taken.

I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I

made my way by the police station and the College Arms

towards my own house. Nothing was burning on the hillside,

though from the common there still came a red glare and a

rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drench-

ing hail. So far as I could see by the flashes, the houses

about me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a dark

heap lay in the road.

Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices

and the sound of feet, but I had not the courage to shout or

to go to them. I let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked

and bolted the door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, and

sat down. My imagination was full of those striding metallic

monsters, and of the dead body smashed against the fence.

I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the

wall, shivering violently.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AT THE WINDOW

I have already said that my storms of emotion have a

trick of exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that

I was cold and wet, and with little pools of water about me

on the stair carpet. I got up almost mechanically, went into

the dining room and drank some whiskey, and then I was

moved to change my clothes.

After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why

I did so I do not know. The window of my study looks over

the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common. In the

hurry of our departure this window had been left open.

The passage was dark, and, by contrast with the picture the

window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed im-

penetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway.

The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental

College and the pine trees about it had gone, and very far

away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand

pits was visible. Across the light huge black shapes, gro-

tesque and strange, moved busily to and fro.

It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction

was on fire--a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame,

swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and

throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every

now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagra-

tion drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes.

I could not see what they were doing, nor the clear form of

them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon.

Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of

it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp,

resinous tang of burning was in the air.

I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window.

As I did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it

reached to the houses about Woking station, and on the other

to the charred and blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There

was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the

arch, and several of the houses along the Maybury road

and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. The light

upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black heap

and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow

oblongs. Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore

part smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon

the rails.

Between these three main centres of light--the houses,

the train, and the burning county towards Chobham--

stretched irregular patches of dark country, broken here and

there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground.

It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set with

fire. It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries

at night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though

I peered intently for them. Later I saw against the light of

Woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after

the other across the line.

And this was the little world in which I had been living

securely for years, this fiery chaos! What had happened in

the last seven hours I still did not know; nor did I know,

though I was beginning to guess, the relation between these

mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps I had seen dis-

gorged from the cylinder. With a queer feeling of impersonal

interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down,

and stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the

three gigantic black things that were going to and fro in

the glare about the sand pits.

They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what

they could be. Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a

thing I felt was impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each,

ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules

in his body? I began to compare the things to human ma-

chines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an

ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent

lower animal.

The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the

burning land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping

into the west, when a soldier came into my garden. I heard

a slight scraping at the fence, and rousing myself from the

lethargy that had fallen upon me, I looked down and saw

him dimly, clambering over the palings. At the sight of

another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out

of the window eagerly.

"Hist!" said I, in a whisper.

He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came

over and across the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent

down and stepped softly.

"Who's there?" he said, also whispering, standing under

the window and peering up.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"God knows."

"Are you trying to hide?"

"That's it."

"Come into the house," I said.

I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and

locked the door again. I could not see his face. He was

hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned.

"My God!" he said, as I drew him in.

"What has happened?" I asked.

"What hasn't?" In the obscurity I could see he made a

gesture of despair. "They wiped us out--simply wiped us

out," he repeated again and again.

He followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining

room.

"Take some whiskey," I said, pouring out a stiff dose.

He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table,

put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a

little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion, while I, with a

curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair, stood beside

him, wondering.

It was a long time before he could steady his nerves to

answer my questions, and then he answered perplexingly and

brokenly. He was a driver in the artillery, and had only come

into action about seven. At that time firing was going on

across the common, and it was said the first party of Martians

were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under

cover of a metal shield.

Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became

the first of the fighting-machines I had seen. The gun he

drove had been unlimbered near Horsell, in order to com-

mand the sand pits, and its arrival it was that had precipi-

tated the action. As the limber gunners went to the rear, his

horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing him

into a depression of the ground. At the same moment the

gun exploded behind him, the ammunition blew up, there

was fire all about him, and he found himself lying under a

heap of charred dead men and dead horses.

"I lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore

quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And

the smell--good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the

back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I

felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before--

then stumble, bang, swish!"

"Wiped out!" he said.

He had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping

out furtively across the common. The Cardigan men had

tried a rush, in skirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be

swept out of existence. Then the monster had risen to its

feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and fro across the

common among the few fugitives, with its headlike hood

turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human being.

A kind of arm carried a complicated metallic case, about

which green flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of

this there smoked the Heat-Ray.

In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see,

not a living thing left upon the common, and every bush and

tree upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was

burning. The hussars had been on the road beyond the

curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. He

heard the Martians rattle for a time and then become still.

The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until

the last; then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear,

and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing

shut off the Heat-Ray, and turning its back upon the artillery-

man, began to waddle away towards the smouldering pine

woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it did so a

second glittering Titan built itself up out of the pit.

The second monster followed the first, and at that the

artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across the hot

heather ash towards Horsell. He managed to get alive into

the ditch by the side of the road, and so escaped to Woking.

There his story became ejaculatory. The place was impassable.

It seems there were a few people alive there, frantic for the

most part and many burned and scalded. He was turned

aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps

of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He

saw this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely

tentacles, and knock his head against the trunk of a pine

tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made a rush

for it and got over the railway embankment.

Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury,

in the hope of getting out of danger Londonward. People

were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the survivors

had made off towards Woking village and Send. He had been

consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains

near the railway arch smashed, and the water bubbling out

like a spring upon the road.

That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew

calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he

had seen. He had eaten no food since midday, he told me

early in his narrative, and I found some mutton and bread

in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp

for fear of attracting the Martians, and ever and again our

hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked, things

about us came darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled

bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew dis-

tinct. It would seem that a number of men or animals had

rushed across the lawn. I began to see his face, blackened

and haggard, as no doubt mine was also.

When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to

my study, and I looked again out of the open window. In

one night the valley had become a valley of ashes. The fires

had dwindled now. Where flames had been there were now

streamers of smoke; but the countless ruins of shattered and

gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night

had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless

light of dawn. Yet here and there some object had had the

luck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a

greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never

before in the history of warfare had destruction been so

indiscriminate and so universal. And shining with the growing

light of the east, three of the metallic giants stood about

the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying

the desolation they had made.

It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever

and again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of

it towards the brightening dawn--streamed up, whirled,

broke, and vanished.

Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They

became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day.

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION

OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON

As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the win-

dow from which we had watched the Martians, and went

very quietly downstairs.

The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no

place to stay in. He proposed, he said, to make his way

Londonward, and thence rejoin his battery--No. 12, of the

Horse Artillery. My plan was to return at once to Leather-

head; and so greatly had the strength of the Martians im-

pressed me that I had determined to take my wife to New-

haven, and go with her out of the country forthwith. For I

already perceived clearly that the country about London

must inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before

such creatures as these could be destroyed.

Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylin-

der, with its guarding giants. Had I been alone, I think I

should have taken my chance and struck across country. But

the artilleryman dissuaded me: "It's no kindness to the right

sort of wife," he said, "to make her a widow"; and in the end

I agreed to go with him, under cover of the woods, northward

as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him. Thence I

would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead.

I should have started at once, but my companion had been

in active service and he knew better than that. He made me

ransack the house for a flask, which he filled with whiskey;

and we lined every available pocket with packets of biscuits

and slices of meat. Then we crept out of the house, and ran

as quickly as we could down the ill-made road by which I

had come overnight. The houses seemed deserted. In the

road lay a group of three charred bodies close together,

struck dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were things

that people had dropped--a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon,

and the like poor valuables. At the corner turning up towards

the post office a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture,

and horseless, heeled over on a broken wheel. A cash box had

been hastily smashed open and thrown under the debris.

Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire,

none of the houses had suffered very greatly here. The Heat-

Ray had shaved the chimney tops and passed. Yet, save our-

selves, there did not seem to be a living soul on Maybury

Hill. The majority of the inhabitants had escaped, I suppose,

by way of the Old Woking road--the road I had taken when

I drove to Leatherhead--or they had hidden.

We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black,

sodden now from the overnight hail, and broke into the

woods at the foot of the hill. We pushed through these

towards the railway without meeting a soul. The woods

across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of

woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain

proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown

foliage instead of green.

On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the

nearer trees; it had failed to secure its footing. In one place

the woodmen had been at work on Saturday; trees, felled

and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing, with heaps of sawdust

by the sawing-machine and its engine. Hard by was a tem-

porary hut, deserted. There was not a breath of wind this

morning, and everything was strangely still. Even the birds

were hushed, and as we hurried along I and the artilleryman

talked in whispers and looked now and again over our

shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen.

After a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we

heard the clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree stems

three cavalry soldiers riding slowly towards Woking. We

hailed them, and they halted while we hurried towards them.

It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of the 8th Hus-

sars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the artilleryman

told me was a heliograph.

"You are the first men I've seen coming this way this morn-

ing," said the lieutenant. "What's brewing?"

His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared

curiously. The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the

road and saluted.

"Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying

to rejoin battery, sir. You'll come in sight of the Martians, I

expect, about half a mile along this road."

"What the dickens are they like?" asked the lieutenant.

"Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and

a body like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood,

sir."

"Get out!" said the lieutenant. "What confounded non-

sense!"

"You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots

fire and strikes you dead."

"What d'ye mean--a gun?"

"No, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of

the Heat-Ray. Halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted

him and looked up at me. I was still standing on the bank by

the side of the road.

"It's perfectly true," I said.

"Well," said the lieutenant, "I suppose it's my business to

see it too. Look here"--to the artilleryman--"we're detailed

here clearing people out of their houses. You'd better go

along and report yourself to Brigadier-General Marvin, and

tell him all you know. He's at Weybridge. Know the way?"

"I do," I said; and he turned his horse southward again.

"Half a mile, you say?" said he.

"At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops south-

ward. He thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no

more.

Farther along we came upon a group of three women and

two children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cot-

tage. They had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling

it up with unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture.

They were all too assiduously engaged to talk to us as we

passed.

By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and

found the country calm and peaceful under the morning sun-

light. We were far beyond the range of the Heat-Ray there,

and had it not been for the silent desertion of some of the

houses, the stirring movement of packing in others, and the

knot of soldiers standing on the bridge over the railway and

staring down the line towards Woking, the day would have

seemed very like any other Sunday.

Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily

along the road to Addlestone, and suddenly through the gate

of a field we saw, across a stretch of flat meadow, six twelve-

pounders standing neatly at equal distances pointing towards

Woking. The gunners stood by the guns waiting, and the

ammunition waggons were at a business-like distance. The

men stood almost as if under inspection.

"That's good!" said I. "They will get one fair shot, at any

rate."

The artilleryman hesitated at the gate.

"I shall go on," he said.

Farther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there

were a number of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up

a long rampart, and more guns behind.

"It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," said

the artilleryman. "They 'aven't seen that fire-beam yet."

The officers who were not actively engaged stood and

stared over the treetops southwestward, and the men digging

would stop every now and again to stare in the same direc-

tion.

Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of

hussars, some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were

hunting them about. Three or four black government wag-

gons, with crosses in white circles, and an old omnibus, among

other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street. There

were scores of people, most of them sufficiently sabbatical to

have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were having

the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of

their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge

box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids,

angrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them

behind. I stopped and gripped his arm.

"Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the

pine tops that hid the Martians.

"Eh?" said he, turning. "I was explainin" these is vallyble."

"Death!" I shouted. "Death is coming! Death!" and leaving

him to digest that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-

man. At the corner I looked back. The soldier had left him,

and he was still standing by his box, with the pots of orchids

on the lid of it, and staring vaguely over the trees.

No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters

were established; the whole place was in such confusion as I

had never seen in any town before. Carts, carriages every-

where, the most astonishing miscellany of conveyances and

horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants of the place, men in

golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed, were pack-

ing, river-side loafers energetically helping, children excited,

and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing

variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst of it all

the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebra-

tion, and his bell was jangling out above the excitement.

I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking

fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had

brought with us. Patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars,

but grenadiers in white--were warning people to move now

or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began.

We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing

crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway

station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and

packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe, in

order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey,

and I have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for

places in the special trains that were put on at a later hour.

We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour

we found ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where

the Wey and Thames join. Part of the time we spent helping

two old women to pack a little cart. The Wey has a treble

mouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and there was

a ferry across the river. On the Shepperton side was an inn

with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of Shepperton Church

--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the trees.

Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As

yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already

far more people than all the boats going to and fro could

enable to cross. People came panting along under heavy bur-

dens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small out-

house door between them, with some of their household goods

piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get away

from Shepperton station.

There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting.

The idea people seemed to have here was that the Martians

were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and

sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end. Every

now and then people would glance nervously across the Wey,

at the meadows towards Chertsey, but everything over there

was still.

Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed,

everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side.

The people who landed there from the boats went tramping

off down the lane. The big ferryboat had just made a

journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn,

staring and jesting at the fugitives, without offering to help.

The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours.

"What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!"

said a man near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came

again, this time from the direction of Chertsey, a muffled

thud--the sound of a gun.

The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen

batteries across the river to our right, unseen because of the

trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other.

A woman screamed. Everyone stood arrested by the sudden

stir of battle, near us and yet invisible to us. Nothing was to

be seen save flat meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for

the most part, and silvery pollard willows motionless in the

warm sunlight.

"The sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubt-

fully. A haziness rose over the treetops.

Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the

river, a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung;

and forthwith the ground heaved under foot and a heavy

explosion shook the air, smashing two or three windows in

the houses near, and leaving us astonished.

"Here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "Yonder!

D'yer see them? Yonder!"

Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the

armoured Martians appeared, far away over the little trees,

across the flat meadows that stretched towards Chertsey, and

striding hurriedly towards the river. Little cowled figures they

seemed at first, going with a rolling motion and as fast as

flying birds.

Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their

armoured bodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly

forward upon the guns, growing rapidly larger as they drew

nearer. One on the extreme left, the remotest that is, flour-

ished a huge case high in the air, and the ghostly, terrible

Heat-Ray I had already seen on Friday night smote towards

Chertsey, and struck the town.

At sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the

crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment

horror-struck. There was no screaming or shouting, but a

silence. Then a hoarse murmur and a movement of feet--a

splashing from the water. A man, too frightened to drop the

portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung round and

sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden.

A woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me. I

turned with the rush of the people, but I was not too terrified

for thought. The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind. To get

under water! That was it!

"Get under water!" I shouted, unheeded.

I faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching

Martian, rushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong

into the water. Others did the same. A boatload of people

putting back came leaping out as I rushed past. The stones

under my feet were muddy and slippery, and the river was

so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet scarcely waist-deep.

Then, as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of

hundred yards away, I flung myself forward under the sur-

face. The splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the

river sounded like thunderclaps in my ears. People were

landing hastily on both sides of the river.

But the Martian machine took no more notice for the

moment of the people running this way and that than a man

would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his

foot has kicked. When, half suffocated, I raised my head

above water, the Martian's hood pointed at the batteries that

were still firing across the river, and as it advanced it swung

loose what must have been the generator of the Heat-Ray.

In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wad-

ing halfway across. The knees of its foremost legs bent at

the farther bank, and in another moment it had raised itself

to its full height again, close to the village of Shepperton.

Forthwith the six guns which, unknown to anyone on the

right bank, had been hidden behind the outskirts of that

village, fired simultaneously. The sudden near concussion,

the last close upon the first, made my heart jump. The

monster was already raising the case generating the Heat-Ray

as the first shell burst six yards above the hood.

I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw and thought nothing of

the other four Martian monsters; my attention was riveted

upon the nearer incident. Simultaneously two other shells

burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted round in

time to receive, but not in time to dodge, the fourth shell.

The shell burst clean in the face of the Thing. The hood

bulged, flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered frag-

ments of red flesh and glittering metal.

"Hit!" shouted I, with something between a scream and a

cheer.

I heard answering shouts from the people in the water

about me. I could have leaped out of the water with that

momentary exultation.

The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but

it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle,

and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fir