 Book 1, Chapter 1 of the War of the Worlds. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells 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 1, The Coming of the Martians Chapter 1, The Eve of the War No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th 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 scrutinized and studied. Perhaps, almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize 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 divided days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds, as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the 20th century came the great disillusionment. The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140 million 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 nebula 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 an animated existence. Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the 19th century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, we scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remota 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 snow caps 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 intellect, 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 million of miles sun would open, a morning star of hope. Our own warm planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere, eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud-wisp, 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 other 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 somewhere is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians ward in the same spirit? The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety. Their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours, and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Skiaparelli watched the Red Planet. It is odd, by the by, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war, but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready. During the opposition of 1894, a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perathon 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 sides of that outbreak during the next two oppositions. The storm burst upon us six years ago now, as Mars approached opposition. Lavel of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas on 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 Ogilby, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings, invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the Red Planet. In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil distinctly, the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof, an oblong pre-thundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilby 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-worn, the 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 million miles of void. Few people realised the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims. Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder and invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles came the thing they were sending us, the thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the Earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched. No one on Earth dreamed of that unerring missile. That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it, a reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline, just as the chronometer struck midnight, and at that I told Ogilby and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness to the little table where the siphons stood, while Ogilby 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 24 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, but I was not suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring to me. Ogilby 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 Ottershore and Chertsey, and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace. He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. The chances against anything man like on Mars are a million to one, he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after, and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth? No-one on Earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke called dust, visible through a powerful telescope on Earth, as little grey, fluctuating patches spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last and popular notes appeared here, there and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The syriacomic periodical punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon and all unsuspected those missiles and Martians had fired at us through Earthward, rushing now to 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 realised the abundance and enterprise of our 19th century papers. From 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 ten million 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 as an earthward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night, coming home a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth pastures, 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 the framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil. End of Book 1, Chapter 1 Book 1, Chapter 2 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Chapter 2, The Falling Star Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester, Eastwood, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Alwin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about 90 or 100 miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about 100 miles east of him. I was at home at that hour, and writing in my study. And although my French windows faced towards Ottershaw, and the blind was up, for I looked, in those days, to look up at the night sky. I saw nothing of it. Yet the 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 Ogilby, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsel, Ottershaw and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, and soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn. The thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part of it 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 Waveridge, 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. He 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 its 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 bolt 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 and 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, there's a man in it, men in it, said Ogilvy. 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-going metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment, then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into a woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock. He met a wagoner 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 pot-man, who was just unlocking the doors of the public house by Orsell Bridge. The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful attempt to shut him into the tap-room. 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, you saw that shooting-star last night?" he called. "- Well?" said Henderson. "- It's out on Horsel Common now. Good Lord!" said Henderson. "- For a 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. Ogle be 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, wrapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside must be insensible or dead. Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight, just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway station at once in order to telegraph the news to London. The newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the idea. By eight o'clock the 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. End of Book One, Chapter Two Book One, Chapter Three of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Chapter Three, on Horsal Common I found the little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk embedded in the ground. The turf and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt its impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there. I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson's house. There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the pit with their feet dangling and amusing themselves until I stopped them by throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about it they began playing at touch in and out of the group of bystanders. Among these were a couple of cyclists a jobbing gardener I employed sometimes a girl carrying a baby Greg 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 table like end of the cylinder which was still as Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was there and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet the top had certainly ceased to rotate. It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of this object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the road. Not so much so indeed it looked like a rusty gas float. It required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive the grayscale of the thing was no common oxide that the yellowish white metal that gleamed in the crack between the loot and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. Extraterrestrial 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 many 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 multiples 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 there's 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 eating 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 shaves 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 or a breath of wind and the only shadow was that of a 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 stream as a smoke. An enterprising sweet stuff dealer in the Chobham Road looked like his son with a barrel load of green apples and ginger beer. Going to the edge of the pit I found it occupied by a row of about half a dozen men Henderson, Ogilvy and a tall, fair haired man that I afterwards learned was Stent, the astronomer royal with several workmen wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving directions in a clear high pitched voice. He was standing on the cylinder which was now evidently much cooler. His face was crimson and streaming with perspiration and something seemed to have irritated him. A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered though its lower end was still embedded. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called me to come down and asked me if I was 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 voice. They wanted a light railing put up and helped 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 quarter past five I went home, had some tea and walked up to the station to wailay him. End of Book 1, Chapter 3 Book 1, Chapter 4 of The War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 4, The Cylinder Opens When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking and one or two persons were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky. A couple of hundred people perhaps that 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 moving. He said to me as he passed. A screaming and a screaming out. I don't like it. I'm a going home I am. I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another. The one or two ladies there being by no means at least active. He's fallen in the pit, cried someone. Keep back, said several. The crowd swayed a little and I elbowed my way through. Everyone seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit. I say, said Ogilvy, help keep those idiots back. We don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know. I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again. The crowd had pushed him in. The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned and as I did so the screw must have come out for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into the person behind me and turned my head towards the thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in my eyes. I think everyone expected to see a man emerge possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men but in all essentials a man. I know I did but, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow greyish billowy movements one above another and then two luminous disks like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake about the thickness of a walking stick called up out of the writhing middle and wriggled in the air towards me and then another. A sudden chill came over me there was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still from which other tentacles were now projecting and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides there was a general movement backwards I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit I found myself alone and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off stent among them I looked again at the cylinder and ungovernable terror gripped me I stood petrified and staring a big greyish rounded bulk the size perhaps of a bear was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder as it bulged up and caught the light it glistened like wet leather two large dark coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly the mass that framed them the head of the thing was rounded and had one might say a face there was a mouth under the eyes the lifeless brim of which quivered and panted and dropped saliva the whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively a blank 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 wedge-like 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 early brown skin something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty even at this first encounter this first glimpse I was overcome with disgust and dread suddenly the monster vanished it had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather I heard it give a peculiar thick cry and forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture I turned then 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 furs bushes I stopped panting and waited for the developments the common round the sand-pits was dotted with people standing like myself in a half-facinated terror daring at these creatures or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay and then, with a renewed horror I saw a round black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit it was the head of the shopman who had fallen in but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun now he got his shoulder and knee up and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible suddenly he vanished and I could have fancied a faint streak had reached me I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him that my fears overruled everything then was quite invisible hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand at the fall of the cylinder had made anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle in ditches, behind bushes and 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 barrel 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 nose bags or pouring the ground End of Book 1, Chapter 4 Book 1, Chapter 5 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 5 The Heat Ray After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet the kind of fascination paralysed my actions I remained standing knee deep in the heather staring at the mound that hid them I was a battleground of fear and curiosity I did not dare to go back towards the pit but I felt a passionate longing to peer into it I began walking therefore in a big curve seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid these newcomers to our earth once a leash of thin black webs like the arms of an octopus flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn and afterwards a thin rod rose up joint by joint bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion what could be going on there most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups one a little crowd towards walking the other a lot 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 neighbor of mine though I did not know his name and the costed but it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation what a glee 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 by fancy a certain comfort in one another's company then I shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was walking towards walking the sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened the crowd far away on the left towards walking seemed to grow and I heard now a faint murmur from it the little lot of people towards Chobham dispersed there was scarcely an intonation of movement from the pit there was this as much as anything that gave people courage and I suppose the new arrivals from working also helped to restore confidence at any rate as the dust came on a slow intermittent movement upon the sand pits began a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken vertical black figures in 2s and 3s 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 cab men and others that walked boldly into the sand pits and heard the clutter of hoops and the glide of wheels I saw a lad trembling off the barrel of apple and then within 30 yards of the pit advancing from the direction of Horsel I noted a little black knot of men the foremost of whom was waving a white flag this was the deputation there had been a hasty consultation and since the Martians were evidently in spite of their repulsive forms intelligent creatures it had been resolved to show them by approaching them with signals that we too were intelligent flutter flutter went the flag first to the right then to the left it was too far for me to recognise anyone there but afterwards I learned that Ogilby, 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 the number of dim black figures followed it at discrete distances suddenly there was a flash of light and the 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 the 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 was suddenly and momentarily turned to fire then by the lights of their own destruction I saw them staggering and falling and their supporters turning to run I stood staring not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd all I felt was that it was something very strange an almost noiseless and blinding flash of light and a man fell headlong and lay still and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them pine trees burst into fire and every dry furs bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames and far away towards Nap Hill 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 sort 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 in the dark ground smoked and crackled something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from Woking Station opens out on the common forthwith the hissing and humming ceased dome-like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit all this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood motionless dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light had that death swept through a full circle it must inevitably have slain me in my surprise but it passed and spared me and left the night about me suddenly dark and unfamiliar the undulating common seen now dark almost a blackness except where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early night it was dark and suddenly void of men over head 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 rooster horsal came out sharp and black against the western afterglow the Martians and their appliances were all together invisible for that thin mass 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 say for that and a terrible astonishment the little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out of existence 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 End of Book 1, Chapter 5 Book 1, Chapter 6 of The War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 6 The Heat Ray in the Chobham Road It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently many think that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity this intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose by means of a polished parable 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 is still a 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 incontamnently that explodes into steam that night nearly 40 people lay under the starlight about the pit charred and distorted beyond recognition and all night long the common from Horsel 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 Horsel 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 it would make of any novelty the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial flirtation you may figure to yourself the common 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 two's and three's upon the open they found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the spinning mirror over the sand pits that were, no doubt, soon infected by the excitement of the occasion by half past eight when the deputation was destroyed there may have been a crowd of 300 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 Sten to keep the people back and deter them from approaching the cylinder there were some booing and those more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always on occasion for noise and horseplay Stent and Ogilby anticipating some possibilities of the collision had telegraphed from Horsel to the barracks as soon as the Martians had emerged for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence after that they returned to lead that ill-fated advance the description of their death as it was seen by the crowd tallies very closely with my own impressions the three puffs of green smoke the deep humming note and the flashes of flame but that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine only the fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the heat ray saved them had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few yards higher none could have lived to tell the tale they saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand as it were lit the brushes as it hurried toward them through the twilight then with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit the beams swung close over their heads lighting the tops of the beach trees that lined the road and splitting the bricks smashing the windows firing the window frames and bringing down in crumbling ruin the portion of the gable of the house hiss and glare over the lighting 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 clashed over his head screaming 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 highbacks 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 died amid the terror and the darkness End of Book 1, Chapter 6 Book 1, Chapter 7 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 7 How I Reached Home For my own part I remember nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather all about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians that pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro flourishing overhead before it descended and smoked me out of life I came into the road between the crossroads and Horsel and ran along this to the crossroads just like a 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 pithalaxed for a moment perhaps I could not clearly understand how I came there my terror had formed from me like a garment my hat had gone and my collar had burst away from its farcener a few minutes before there had only been three real things before me the immensity of the night and space and nature my own feebleness and anguish and the near approach of death now it was if something turned over and the points 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 of the steep incline of the bridge my mind was a blank wonder my muscles and nerves seemed drained of their strength I daresay I staggered drunkenly a head rose over the arch a little 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 Archer train a billowing tumult of white violet smoke and a long caterpillar overlighted windows went flying south clatter-clatter-clap-wrap and it had gone a dim group of people talked in the gate at one of those houses in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace it was also 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 and the war from the outside from somewhere inconceivably remote out of time, out of space out of the stress and tragedy of it all this feeling was very strong upon me that night here was another side to my dream but the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder not two miles away there was a noise of business from the gas works 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 said one of the men, turning what news from the common I said, ain't you just been there asked the men people seemed very silly about the common said the woman over the gate what's it all about haven't you heard of the men from Mars said I, the creatures from Mars quite enough said the woman over the gate thanks 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 pits and kill people who come near them but they cannot get out of it but the horror of them don't dare, said my wife knitting her brows and putting a hand on mine poor Ogilvy, I said to think he may be lying dead there my wife at least did not find my experience incredible when I saw how deadly white her face was I ceased abruptly they may come here she said again and again I pressed her to take wine and tried to reassure her they can scarcely move, I said I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the earth in particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty on the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars the 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 therefore that indeed was the general opinion both the times and the daily telegraph for instance insisted on it the next morning and both overlooked just as I did two obvious modifying influences the atmosphere of the earth we now know contains far more oxygen or far less argon whichever way one likes to put it than does Mars the invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies and in the second place we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martians possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion as 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 wine glass 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 erythism I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now my dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lampshade the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries the crimson purple wine in my glass are photographically distinct at the end of it I sat tempering nuts with a cigarette regretting Ogilvy's rashness and denouncing the short sighted timidity of the Martians so some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lauded it in his nest and discussed the arrival of that ship full of pitiless sailors in want of animal food we will pet 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 end of book 1 chapter 7 book 1 chapter 8 of the war of the worlds this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org the war of the worlds by H.G. Wells chapter 8 Friday night the most extraordinary thing to my mind of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong if on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of 5 miles around the Woking Sand pits I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it unless it were some relation or stent or of the 3 or 4 cyclists or London people lying dead on the common whose emotions or habits were all affected by the newcomers 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 decided not to print a special edition even within the 5 mile circle the great majority of people were inert I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to whom I spoke all over the district people were dining and supping working men were gardening after the labours of the day children were being put to bed young people were wandering through the lanes love making students sat over their books maybe there was a murmur in the village streets a novel and dominant topic in the public houses and here and there a messenger or even an eyewitness of the later occurrences caused a whirl of excitement a shouting and a running to and fro but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping went on as it had done for countless years as though no planet Mars existed in the sky even at Woking Station and Horsel and Chobham was the case in Woking Junction until a late hour trains were stopping and going on others were shunting on the sideways passengers were alighting and waiting and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way the boy from the town trenching on Smith's Monopoly were selling papers with the afternoon's news the ringing impact of the 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 London woods peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows and saw only a rare flickering vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsel a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars and thought that nothing more serious than the Heathfire was happening it was only round the edge of the common but any disturbance was perceptible there were half a dozen villas burning on the working 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 Horsel bridges one or two adventurous souls it was afterwards found went into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians but they never returned from now and again a light ray like the beam of a warship search light 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 shard 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 dead and nerve and destroyed 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 into the starlit sky about eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsel and deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon the second company marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the common several officers from the Incoman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day and one, Major Eden was reported to be missing the colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight the military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business about eleven the next morning's papers were able to say a squadron of hussars, two maxims and about four hundred men of the cardigan regiment started from older shot a few seconds after midnight the crowd in the churchy road woke in, saw a star fall from the 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 end of book one chapter eight book one, chapter nine of the war of the worlds this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org the war of the worlds by H.G. Wells chapter nine the fighting begins Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense it was a day of latitude too hot and close with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating barometer I had slept that 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 stalled into breakfast it was a most unexceptional morning my neighbour was of the opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day it's a pity they make themselves sort and approachable he said it would be curious to know how they live on another planet we might learn a thing or two he came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic at the same time he told me of the burning at the pine woods about the bifleed cocklings they say, said he that there's another of those blessed things fallen there number two but one's enough surely this lot will cost the insurance people 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 underfoot for days on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf he said and then grew serious over poor all will be after breakfast, instead of working I decided to walk down towards the common under the railway bridge with the 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 car 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 and they had but the vaguest ideas of them so 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 crawler and a cuppa and Russians say I get out said another what cuppers against this here eat sticks to cook you what we got to do is go as near as the ground all at us and then drive a trench blow your trenches you always want trenches you ought to have been born a rabbit snippy ain't they got any necks then said a third abruptly a little contemplated dark man smoking a pipe description octopuses said he that's what I called and talk about fishes on men fighters or fish it is this time it ain't no murder killing beasts like that said the first speaker when I shelled the down things straight off and finish them said the little dark man you can't tell what they might do where just 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 the description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common for even Horsel and Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities the soldiers I had rest 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 Horsel 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 stereotype formula of the papers a sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole the Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the lowing of a cow I must confess the sight of all this armament all this preparation greatly excited me my imagination became belligerent and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back it hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time they seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs about three o'clock there began the thud of a gun that measured intervals from Churchill or Adelstone I learned that the smouldering pinewood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled in the hope of destroying that object before it opened it was only about five however that a field gun reached Chobham the first body of Martians about six in the evening as I sat at tea with my wife in the summer house 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 hills 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 and the red flame and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin the pinnacle of the mosque had vanished and the reef 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 flowerbed by my study window I and my wife stood amazed then I realised that the crest of Magery Hill must be within range of the Martian's 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 a terror I thought perplexed then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead Leatherhead I shouted above the sudden noise she looked away from me down the hill the people were coming out of their houses astonished how were 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 and the tops of the trees seemed blood red and through an unfamiliar and lurid light upon everything stop here said I you are safe here and I started off at once with a spotted dog for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog car 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 now want 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 off my bit of a pig two pounds and you bring it back what's going on there I explained hastily that I had to leave my home and so secured the dog car at the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his I took care to have the car 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 plates as we had and so forth the beach trees below the house were burning while I did this and the palings up the road glowed red while I was occupied in this way one of the dismounted hussars came running up he was going from house to house warning people to leave what's going on as I came out 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 into the thing like a dish cover and ran onto the gate of the house of the crest a sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hidden for a moment I ran to my neighbour's door and wrapped to satisfy myself with 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 servants 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 stream as a black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air and throwing dark shadows upon the green tree shops eastward the smoke already extended far away to the east and west to the bifleet 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 word of a machine gun that was presently still and an intermittent cracking of rifles apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range of their heat ray I am not an expert driver and I had immediately to turn my attention to the horse when I look back again the second hill had hidden the black smoke I slashed the horse with the whip and gave him a loose rain until Woking and Sends lay between us and that quivering tumult I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and Sends End of book 1 Chapter 9 Book 1 Chapter 10 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 10 In the Storm Leatherhead is about 12 miles from the Libri Hill The scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyreford 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 Libri Hill ceased as abruptly as it began leaving the evening very peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about nine o'clock and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to their care My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive and seemed depressed with forebodings of evil I talked to her reassuringly pointing out that the Martians were tied to the pit by sheer heaviness and that the utmost could but crawl a little out of it 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 Warfever that occasionally runs through a civilised community had got into my blood and in my heart I was not so very sorry to turn to Mabry that night I was even afraid that that last fuselage 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 cousin's house It seemed indeed black It was as hot and close as the day Overhead the clouds were driving fast albeit not a breath to the shrubs about us My cousin's 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-car Then abruptly she turned and went in leaving my cousin side by side wishing me good luck 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 thought 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 in the sky the clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there with masses of black and red smoke Ripley Street was deserted and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life but I narrowly escaped an accident at the corner of the road to Pireford where a lot 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 or 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 Pireford I was in the valley of the way and the red glare was hidden from me As I ascended the little hill beyond Pireford's shirt the glare came into you again and the trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm I heard midnight peeling out from Pireford church behind me and then came the silhouettes of Maybury Hill with its treetops and roofs black and sharp against the red Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards Adelserve 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 towards the field to my left it was the third falling star close on its apparition and blindingly violent 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 as I have ever seen the thunderclaps treading one on the hills 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 hell smoked gustily at my face as I drove down the slope at first I regarded little but the road before me and then it brought me my attention 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 flashlight 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 to steal dangling from it and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riots of the thunder a flash and it came out vividly healing over one way 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 stall tilted and bolt violently along the ground that was the impression those instant flashes gave but instead of a milking stall imagine 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 walking through them they were snapped off and driven headlong and a second huge tripod appeared brushing as it seemed headlong towards me and I was galloping hard to meet it at the sight of the second monster my nerve went all together not stopping to look again I wrenched the horses head hard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had healed over upon the horse the shaft smashed noisily and I was flung sideways heavily into a shallow pool of water I crawled out almost immediately and crouched my feet still in the water under a clump of furs 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 pyreford seeing nearer the thing was incredibly strange for it was no mere insense machine driving on its way machine it was with a ringing metallic pace and long flexible glittering tentacle one of which ripped 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 then 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 hunter and in another minute it was with its companion half a mile away stooping over something in the field I have no doubt that this thing in the field was the third of the 10 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 the thin hell was now beginning and as it came and went their figures were misty and then flashed into cleanest 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 room 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 here if there were any people inside and after a time I'd assisted 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 Maverick the number of this I pushed on wet and shivering now towards my own house I walked among the trees trying to find a footpath it was very dark indeed in the wood for the lightning was now becoming infrequent and the hail which was pouring down in Soren's 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 cobbum 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 before I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin deafened and blinded by the storm I had a vague idea of going 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 knee 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 pailings near the top I stumbled upon something soft and by a flash of lightning saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair of boots before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay the flicker of light had passed I stood over him waiting for the next flash when it came I saw that he was a sturdy man cheaply but not shabbily dressed his head was bent under his body and he lay crumpled up close to the fence as though he had been flung violently against it overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before touched a dead body I stooped and turned him over to feel for his heart he was quite dead apparently his neck had been broken the lightning flashed for a third time and his face leapt upon me I sprang to my feet it was the lone lord 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 collage arms towards my own house nothing was burning on the hillside though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail so far as I could see by the flashes the houses about me were mostly uninges by the collage arms a dark heap lay in the road down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices in the sound of feet but I had not the courage to shout or go to them I let myself in with my latch key closed, locked and bolted the door and 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 end of book 1, chapter 10 book 1, chapter 11 of the war of the world this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the World by H. G. Wells chapter 11 at the window I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves after a time I discovered that I was cold and wet and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet I got up almost mechanically went into the dining room and drank some whiskey and then I was moved to change my clothes after I had done that I went upstairs to my study but why I did so I do not know the window of my study looks over the trees a railway towards Horsel Common in the hurry of our departure this window had been left open the passage was dark and by contrast with the pitch of the window framing closed the side of the room seemed impenetrable dark I stopped short in the doorway the thunderstorm had passed the towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone and very far away lit by a vivid red glare the common about the sand pits was visible across the light huge black shapes grotesque and strange moved busily to and fro it seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire a broad hillside set with my newt tongues of flame swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm and throwing a red reflection on the cloud skirt above every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes I could not see what they were doing nor the clear form of them nor recognise the black objects they were busily upon neither could I see the nearer fire though the reflections of it danced on the wall in the ceiling of the study a sharp, resonance 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 working station on the other to the charred and black and 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 Mabry Road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins 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 four parts smashed out on fire the hinder carriages still upon the rails between these three main centres of light the houses, the train and the burning country towards Chobham stretched irregular patches of dark country broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground it was the strangest spectacle that black expanse set with fire it reminded me more than anything else of the potteries at night at first I could distinguish no people at all though I peered intently for them later I saw against the lights 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 discord 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 such as a manned brain sits some rules in his body I began to compare the things to human machines to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal the storm had left the sky clear and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west when a soldier came into my garden I heard a slight scraping of 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 hissed said I, in a whisper he stopped a stride 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 on 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 whisky 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 the 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 unbrokenly 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 unlimited near Horsel in order to command the sand pits and it's arrival it was that had precipitated the action as the limba gunners went to the rear his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down throwing him into a depression on 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 and lay still he said scared out of my wits with the fork water of a horse atop of me we've been wiped out and the smell good God like burnt meat I was heard to cross 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 and stumble bang swish wiped out you 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 head like 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 smote 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 entry upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning the hussars had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground and he saw nothing of them he heard the maxims rattle for a time and then become still the giant safe waking 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 artillery man began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards Horsel he managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road and so escaped the Woking there his story became ejaculatory the place was impassable it seemed there were a few people alive there frantic for the most part many burned and scalded he was turned aside by the fire among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned he saw this one pursuer 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 artillery man 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 Londonwood people were hiding in trenches and cellars and many of the survivors headed towards Woking Village and Cend he had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains near the railway arch smashed and the water bubbling out like a spring upon the road that was the story I got from him bit by bit he grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen he had eaten no food since midday he told me early in his narrative and I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room we lit no lamp for fear of attracting the Martians and ever and again our hands would touch upon bread or meat as he talked things about us came darkly out of the darkness and the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct it would seem that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn I began to see his face blackened and haggard as no doubt mine was also when we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study and I looked again at 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 the 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 world broke and vanished beyond with the pillars of fire about Chobham there became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of the day End of book 1 Chapter 11