 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Book 1, The Coming of the Martians Chapter 1, The Eve of 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 visit themselves about their various concerns they were being 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 departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied that 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 intellect vast and cruel 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 to remind the reader revolves about the Sun at a mean distance of a hundred and forty 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 cease to be molten life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one-seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. Yet so vain is man and so blinded by his vanity that no writer up to the very end of the 19th century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far and indeed at all beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and 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 intellects enlarge their powers and harden 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 sunward of them a morning star of hope our own warmer planet green with vegetation and grey with water with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy-crowded seas. And before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians in spite of their human likeness were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of 50 years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit? The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of hours 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 19th century. Men like Schiaparelli watch the red planet it is odd by and by that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they map 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 Peratin in Nice and then by other observers English readers heard of it first in the issue of nature dated August the second I'm 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 explained were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions the storm burst upon us six years ago now as Mars approached opposition Lavel of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet it had occurred towards midnight of the 12th 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 12 he compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet as flaming gases rushed out of a gun a singularly appropriate phrase it proved yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy and 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 the scrutiny of the red planet in spite of all that had happened since I still remember that vigil very distinctly the black and silent observatory the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope the little slit in the roof an oblong profundity with the star dust streaked across it Ogilvy moved about invisible but audible looking through the telescope one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field it seemed such a little thing so bright and small and still faintly marked with transverse stripes and slightly flattened from the perfect round but so little it was so silvery warm a pinhead 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 go larger and smaller and to advance and recede but that was simply that my eye was tired 40 millions of miles it was from us more than 40 millions of miles of void few people realized the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims near it in the field I remember were three faint points of light three telescopic stars infinitely remote and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space you know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night in a telescope it seems far profounder and invisible to me because it was so remote and small flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles came the thing they were sending us the thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth I never dreamed of it then as I watched no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile that night too there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet I saw it a reddish flash at the edge the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place the night was warm and I was thirsty and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness to the little table where the siphon stood while Ogilvy exclaimed at the stream of gas that came out towards us that night another invisible missile started on its way to 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 little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me Ogilvy watched till one and then gave it up and walked over to his house down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people sleeping in peace he was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us his idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress he pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets the chances against anything 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 shot ceased after the 10th no one on earth has attempted to explain it may be the gases of the firing cause the Martians inconvenience dense clouds of smoke or dust visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey fluctuating patches spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last and popular notes appeared here, there and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars the serial comic periodical punch I remember made a happy use of it in the political cartoon and all unsuspected those missiles the Martians had fired at us through earthward rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space hour by hour and day by day nearer and nearer it seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that with that swift fate hanging over us men could go about their pretty concerns as they did I remember how jubilant Markham was during a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days people in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our 19th century papers for my part I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed one night the first missile then could scarcely have been 10 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 zenith wood towards which so many telescopes were pointed it was a warm night coming home a party of excursionists from churchy or isleworth past us singing and playing music there were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed from the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains ringing and rumbling softened almost into melody by the distance my wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky it seemed so safe and tranquil end of chapter 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 2 The Falling Star then came the night of the first falling star it was seen early in the morning 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 Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites stated that the height of its first appearance was about 90 or 100 miles it seemed to him that it fell to earth about 100 miles east of him I was at home that hour and writing in my study and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky I saw nothing of it yet 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 and seems to have troubled to look for the fall and mass that night but very early in the morning poor Ogilvy who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsel, Ottershaw and Woking rose early with the idea of finding it find it he did soon after dawn and not far from the sand pits an enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile and the sand and gravel 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 dorm the thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent the uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder caked over and its outline softened with the thick scaly done coloured incrustation it had a diameter of about 30 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 waybridge was already warm we remember hearing any birds that morning there was certainly no breeze stirring and the only sounds were the fate movements from within the cindery cylinder he was all alone on the common then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite was falling off the circular edge of the end it was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand a large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth for a minute he scarcely realised what this meant and although the heat was excessive he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to see the thing more clearly he fancied even then that the cooling of the body might account for this but what disturbed that idea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder and then he perceived that very slowly the circular top of the cylinder was rotating on its body it was such a gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the circumference even then he scarcely understood what this indicated until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so then the thing came upon him in a flash the cylinder was artificial hollow with an end that screwed out, something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top good heavens said Ogilvy there's a man in it, many in it half roasted to death, trying to escape at once with a quick mental leap he linked the thing with the flash on Mars the thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn but luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands on the still glowing metal at that he stood irresolute for a moment then turned, scrambled out of the pit and set off running wildly into woking the time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock he met a wagoner and tried to make him understand his appearance was so wild his hat had fallen off in the pit that the man simply drove on he was equally unsuccessful with the popman who was just unlocking the doors of the public house by horse or 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 the garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood Henderson, he called you saw the shooting star last night said Henderson, it's out on horse or common now good lord, said Henderson, fallen meteorite that's good but it's something more than a meteorite it's a cylinder, an artificial cylinder man and there's something inside Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand what's that, he said he was deaf in one ear Ogilvy told him all that he had seen Henderson was a minute or so taking it in then he dropped his spade snatched up his jacket and came out into the road the two men hurried back at once to the common and found the cylinder still lying in the same position but now the sounds inside had ceased and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder air was either entering or escaping at the rim with a thin sizzling sound they listened wrapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick a meeting with no response they 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 up 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 mind for the reception of the idea by eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the dead men from Mars that was the form the story took I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when I went out to get my daily chronicle I was naturally startled and lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand pits chapter two this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells book one chapter three I found a little crowd of perhaps 20 people surrounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay I have already described the appearance of the 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 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 job in Gardner 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 fancied 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 close to it that the strangeness of this object wasn't to me at the first glance it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the road not so much so indeed it looked like a rusty gas float it required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the grey scale of the thing was no common oxide that the yellowish white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue extra terrestrial had no meaning for most of the unlockers at that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the thing had come from the planet Mars but I judged it improbable that it contained any living creature I thought the unscrewing might be automatic in spite of Ogilvy I still believed that there were men in Mars my mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of it containing manuscript on the difficulties in translation that might arise whether we should find coins and models in it and so forth yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea I felt impatient to see it opened about 11 as nothing seemed happening I walked back full of such thought to my home in Maybury but I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations in the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very much the early editions of the evening papers had startled London with enormous headlines a message received from Mars remarkable story from Woking and so forth in addition Ogilvy's wire to the astronomical exchange had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms there were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station standing in the road by the sand pits a basket shares from Cobham and a rather lordly carriage beside that there were 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 they were all together quite a considerable crowd one or two gaily dressed ladies among the others it was glaringly hot not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind and the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees the burning heather had been extinguished but the level ground towards Ottershaw was blackened as far as one could see and still giving off vertical streamers of smoke an enterprising sweet stuff dealer in the Cobham Road had sent up 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 group of about half a dozen men Henderson, Ogilvy and a tall fair-haired man that I afterwards learnt 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 he was 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 would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the Lord of the Manor the growing crowd he said was becoming a serious impediment to their excavations especially the boys they wanted a light railing put up and 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 and had some tea and walked up to the station to way lay him End of Chapter 3 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 4 The Cylinder Opens When I returned to the common the sun was setting scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of woking and one or two persons were returning the crowd about the pit had increased and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky a couple of hundred people perhaps there were raised voices and some sort of a 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 moving, he said to me as he passed a screw in and a screw out I don't like it, I'm 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 no means the 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 these idiots back we don't know what's in the confounded thing you know I saw a young man a shop assistant in woking I believe he was standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again the crowd had pushed him in the end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within nearly two feet of the shining screw projected somebody blundered against me and I narrowly missed being pitched on top of the screw I turned and as I did so the screw must have come out for the lid of the cylinder fell onto the gravel with a ringing concussion I struck 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 a terrestrial man but in all essentials a man I know I did but looking I presently saw something stirring within the shadow grayish billowy movements one above another and then two luminous discs like eyes then something resembling a little gray snake about the thickness of a walking stick coiled up and 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 side 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 grayish 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 colored eyes were regarding me steadfastly the mass that framed them the head of the thing was rounded and had one might say a face there was a mouth under the eyes the lipless brim of which quivered and panted and dropped saliva the whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively a lanked 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 its 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 on its oily brown skin something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty even at this first encounter this first glimpse I was overcome with disgust and dread suddenly the monster vanished it had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather I heard it give a peculiar thick cry and forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture I turned and running madly made for the first group of trees perhaps a hundred yards away but I run slantingly and stumbling for I could not avert my face from these things there among the 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 staring at these creatures or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay and then with a renewed horror I saw a round black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit it was the head of the shopman but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun now he got his shoulder and knee up and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible suddenly he vanished and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him that my fears overruled everything was then quite invisible hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made the road from Cobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle in ditches behind bushes behind gates and hedges saying little to one another and that in short excited shouts and staring staring hard at a few heaps of sand the barrow of ginger beer stood a queer derelict black against the burning sky and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nose bags or pouring the ground end of chapter 4 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 5 The Heat Ray after the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet a kind of fascination paralyzed 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 whips like the arms of an octopus flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn and afterwards a thin rod rose joint by joint bearing at its apex a circular disc that spun with a wobbling motion what could be going on there most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups one a little crowd towards woking and the other a knot of people in the direction of Cobham evidently they shared my mental conflict there were few near me one man I approached he was I perceived a neighbour of mine though I did not know his name and accosted him but it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation what ugly brutes he repeated this over and over again did you see the man in the pit I said but he made no answer to that we became silent and stood watching I am side by side deriving I fancy a certain comfort in one another's company then I shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me an advantage of a yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was walking towards woking the sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened the crowd far away on the left towards woking seemed to grow and I heard now a faint murmur from it the little knot of people towards the bottom dispersed there was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit it was this as much as anything that gave people courage and I suppose the new arrivals from woking also helped to restore confidence at any rate as the dust came on a slow intermittent movement from the sand pits began a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance stop watch and advance again spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attendant horns I too on my side began to move towards the pit then I saw some cab men and others had walked boldly into the sand pits and heard the clatter of hooves and the grind of wheels I saw a lad trundling off the barrel of apples and then within thirty 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 to the right then to the left it was too far for me to recognise anyone there but afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent and Henderson were with others in this attempt at communication this little group had in its advance dragged inward so to speak this conference of the now almost complete circle of people and a number of dim black figures followed at a discrete distance suddenly there was a flash of light and a quantity of luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs which drove up one after the other straight into the still air this smoke or flame perhaps would be the better word for it was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown common towards Chertsey set with black pine trees seemed to darken abruptly as these puffs arose and to remain the darker after the 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 this phenomena a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground as the green smoker rose 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 into fire then by the light of their own destruction I saw them staggering and falling and their supporters turning to run I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd all I felt was that it was something very strange an almost noiseless and blinding flash of light and a man fell headlong and lay still and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them pine trees burst into fire and every dry fursbush became with one dull thud a mass of flames and far away towards Nap Hill I saw flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings suddenly set to light 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 suddenly stilled then it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated figure were drawn through the heather between me and the Martians and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled flash far away to the left where the road from working station opens out on the common forthwith the hissing and humming ceased and the black dome-like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit all of this had happened with such swiftness that I had stopped motionless dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light had that death swept through a full circle it must have inevitably slain me in my surprise but it passed and spared me and left the night about me suddenly dark and unfamiliar the undulating common now seemed dark almost to blackness except where its roadway lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early night it was dark and suddenly void of men overhead the stars were mustering and in the west the sky was still a pale bright almost greenish blue the tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsel came out sharp and black against the western afterglow the Martians and their appliances were altogether invisible save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror wobbled patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and glowed still and the houses towards Woking Station were sending up spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment the little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out of existence and the stillness of the evening so it seemed to me had scarcely been broken it came to me that I was upon this dark common helpless unprotected and alone suddenly like a thing falling upon me from without came fear with an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the heather the fear I felt was no rational fear but a panic terror not only of the Martians but of the dusk and stillness all about me such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do once I had turned I did not dare to look back I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with that presently when I was upon the very verge of safety this mysterious death as swift as the passage of light would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down End of Chapter 5 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 1 Chapter 6 The Heatray in the Cobham Road It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently many think that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity this intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light but no one has absolutely proved these details however it is done it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter heat an invisible instead of visible light whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch lead runs like water it softens iron cracks and melts glass and when it falls upon water incontinently that explodes into steam that night nearly 40 people lay under the starlight about the pit charred and distorted beyond recognition and all night long the common from Horsel to Mabry was deserted and brightly ablaze the news of the massacre probably reached Cobham 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 run out at last upon the common you may imagine the young people brushed up after the labors of the day were making this novelty as they would make any novelty the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial flirtation you may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming as yet of course few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had opened though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to the post office with a special wire to an evening paper as these folks came out by twos and threes upon the common they found little people talking excitingly and peering at the spinning mirror over the sand pits and the newcomers 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 Stent to keep the people back and deter them from approaching the cylinder there were some booing from those more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an occasion for noise and horseplay Stent and Ogilvy anticipating some possibility of a collision had telegraphed from Horsel to the barracks as soon as the Martians emerged for the help of the company of soldiers protecting strange creatures from violence after that they returned to lead that ill-fated advance the description of their death 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 an invisible hand as it were lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight then with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the pit the beams swung close above their heads lighting the tops of the beach trees that line the road and splitting the bricks smashing the windows firing the window frames and bringing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the gable of the house nearest the corner in the sudden thud, hiss and glare of nighting trees the panic-stridden crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for a moment sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road and single leaves like puffs of flame hats and dresses caught fire then came crying from the common there were shrieks and shouts and suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over his head screaming they're coming! a woman shrieked and incontinently everyone was turning behind in order to clear their way to Woking again they must have bolted as blindingly as a flock of sheep where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd jammed and a desperate struggle occurred all that crowd did not escape three persons at least two women and a little boy were crushed and trampled there and left to die amid the terror and the darkness end of chapter 6 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1, 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 at last I could go no further I was exhausted with the violence of my emotion and of my flight and I staggered and fell by the wayside that was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks I fell and lay still I must have remained there for some time I sat up strangely perplexed for a moment perhaps I could not clearly understand how I came there my terror had fallen from me like a garment my hat had gone and my collar had burst away from its fastener a few minutes before there had only been three real things before me the immensity of the night and space and nature my own feebleness and anguish and the near approach of death now it was as if something turned over and the point of view altered abruptly there was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other I was immediately the self of every day again a decent, ordinary citizen the silent common the impulse of my flight the starting flames were as if they had been in a dream I asked myself had these latter things indeed happened I could not credit it I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge my mind was blank wonder my nerves and nerves seemed drained of their strength I daresay I staggered drunkenly a head rose over the arch and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared beside him ran a little boy he passed me wishing me good night I was minded to speak to him but not I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and went over the bridge over the Maybury arch a train a billowing tumult of white firelit smoke and a long caterpillar of lighted windows flying south clatter, clatter, clapperap and it had gone a dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace it was 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 I seem to watch it all from the outside from somewhere inconceivably remote out of time, out of space out of the stress and tragedy of it all this feeling was very strong upon me that night here was another side of my dream but the trouble was the blanking congruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder not two miles away there was a noise of business from the gasworks it lamps were all a light I stopped at the group of people what news from the common said I there were two men and a woman at the gate eh? said one of the men turning, what news from the common I said, ain't you just been there asked the men people seem fair 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 quiet enough said the woman over the gate 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 started my wife at the doorway so haggard was I I went into the dining room, sat down drank some wine and as soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen the dinner which was a cold one I served and remained neglected on the table while I told my story there is one thing I said to allay the fears I had aroused they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl, they may keep the pit and kill people who come near them but they cannot get out of it but the horror of them don't dear said my wife knitting her brows and putting her hand in mine poor uncle V I said to think he may be lying dead there my wife at least she did not find my experience incredible when I saw how deadly white her face was I ceased abruptly they may come here she said again and again I pressed her to take wine and tried to reassure her they can scarcely move I said I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the earth in particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty on the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars a Martian therefore would weigh three times more than on Mars albeit his muscular strength would be the same his own body would be a cope of lead to him that indeed was the general opinion both the Times and the Daily Telegraph for instance insisted on it the next morning and both overlooked just as I did two obvious modifying influences the atmosphere of the earth we now know contains far more oxygen or far less argon whichever way one likes to put it and as Mars the invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies and in the second place we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch but I did not consider these points at the time and so my reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders with wine and food the confidence of my own table and the necessity of reassuring my wife I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure they have done a foolish thing I said 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 but a pit said I if the worst comes to the worst we'll 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 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 shitful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food we will pick them to death tomorrow my dear I did not know it but that was the last civilized dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days end of chapter 7 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 8 Friday Night the most extraordinary thing to my mind of all the strange and wonderful things and 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 working sand pits I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it unless it were some relation of stent or of the 3 or 4 cyclists or London people lying dead on the common whose emotions or habits were at 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, the man was killed 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 lane 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 Cobham that was the case in Woking Junction until a late hour trains were stopping and going on buses were shunting on the sidings passengers were alighting and waiting and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way a boy from the town trenching on Smith's Monopoly was selling papers with the afternoon's news the ringing impact of trucks the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction mingled with their shouts of men for a bus 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 a heath fire was happening it was only round the edge of the common that any disturbance was perceptible there were half a dozen villas burning on the Woking border there were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages and the people there kept awake till dawn a curious crowd lingered restlessly people coming and going but the crowd remaining both on the cobbin 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 for now and again a light ray like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept the common and the heat ray was ready to follow safe as such that big area of common was silent and desolate and the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars and all the next day a noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people so you have the state of things on Friday night in the centre sticking into the skin of our old planet earth like a poisoned dart was this cylinder but the poison was scarcely working yet around it in a patch of silent common smoldering in places and with a few dark dimly seen objects lying in contoured 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 destroy brain had still to develop all night long the Martians were hammering and stirring sleepless, indefatigable at work upon the machines they were making ready and ever and again a puff of greenish white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky about eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsel and deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon later a second company marched through Cobham to deploy on the north side of the common from the income and 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 Cobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight the military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business about eleven the next morning's papers were able to say a squadron of hussars two maxims and about four hundred men of the cardigan regiment started from Aldershot a few seconds after midnight the crowd in the churchy road woking saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest it had a greenish color and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning this was the second cylinder end of chapter 8 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 9 The Fighting Begins Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense it was a day of lassitude too hot and close with I am told a rapidly fluctuating barometer I had slept but little though my wife had succeeded in sleeping and I rose early I went into my garden before breakfast listening but toward 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 started with him for a while and then strolled into breakfast it was a most unexceptional morning my neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day it's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable he said it would be curious to know how they live on another planet we might learn a thing or two he came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries for his Gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic at the same time he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the bi-fleet gulf lynx they say, he said that there's another of those blessed things fallen there, number two but one's enough surely this law cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything settled he laughed with an air of the greatest 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 and then grew serious over poor Ogilvy after breakfast instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers sappers, I think men in small round caps dirty red jackets unbuttoned and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers and boots coming to the calf they told me that no one was allowed over the canal and looking across the road towards the bridge I saw one of the cardigan men standing sentinel there I talked with these soldiers for a time I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening none of them had seen the Martians and they had but the vaguest idea of them so that they plied me with questions they said that they did not know who would authorize the movement 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 discuss the peculiar conditions of the fight with some acuteness I described the hitre to them and they began to argue among themselves crawl up under cover and rush them say I said one get out said another what's cover against this ear eat sticks to cook ya what we got to do is to go as near as the ground or let us and then drive a trench blow ya trenches you always want trenches you ought to have been born a rabbit snippy ain't they got any necks then third abruptly a little contemplative dark man smoking a pipe I repeated my description octopuses said he that's what I call them talk about fish as a men fight as a fish it is this time it ain't no murder killing beasts like that said the first speaker why not shell the darn things stright off and finish them said the little dark man you can't tell what they might do where's your shell said the first speaker 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 Horsal and Cobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities the soldiers I addressed not 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 Horsal lock up and leave their houses I got back to lunch about 2 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 4 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 readily for a struggle fresh attempts had 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 seem very helpless in that pit of theirs about three o'clock there began the sight of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey or Adelston 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 Cobham for use against 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 heels of that came a violent rattling crash quite close to us that shook the ground and starting out upon the lawn I saw the tops of the trees about the oriental college burst into smoky red flame and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin the pinnacle of the mosque had vanished and the roofline of the college itself looked as if a hundred ton gun had been at work upon it one of our chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it flew and a piece of it came clattering down the tiles and made a heap of broken red fragments upon the flower bed at my study window I and my wife stood amazed then I realised that the crest of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians heat ray now that the college was cleared out of the way at that I gripped my wife's arm and without ceremony ran her out into the road then I fetched out the servant telling her I would go upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for we can't possibly stay here I said and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common but where are we to go said my wife in terror I thought perplexed then I remembered her cousins in Leatherhead Leatherhead I shouted above the sudden noise she looked away from me downhill the people were coming out of their houses astonished how are we to get to Leatherhead she said down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge three galloped through the open gates of the oriental college two others dismounted and began running from house to house the sun shining through the smoke that drove up the tops of the trees seemed blood red and through an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything stop here I said you're safe here and I started off at once for the spotted dog for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart I ran for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the hill would be moving I found him in his bar quite unaware of what was going on behind his house a man stood with his back to me talking to him I must have a pound said the landlord and I have no one to drive it I'll give you two said I over the stranger's shoulder for what and I'll bring it back by midnight I said Lord said the landlord what's the hurry I'm selling my bit of a pig two pounds and you'll bring it back what's going on now I explained hastily that I had to leave my home and so secured the dog cart at the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his I took care to have the cart there and then drove it off down the road and leaving it in the charge of my wife and servant rushed into my house and packed a few valuables such plate 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 he was going on as I came out of my front door lugging my treasures done up in a tablecloth I shouted after him what news he turned, stared bawled something about crawling out in a thing like a dish cover and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest a sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hit him for a moment I ran to my neighbour's door and wrapped to satisfy myself of what I already knew that his wife had gone to London with him and had locked up their house I went in again, according to my promise to get my 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 the hill towards Old Woking in front was a quiet sunny landscape a wheat field ahead on either side of the road and the Maybelline 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 up the hillside I was leaving thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air and throwing dark shadows upon the green tree-trops eastward I landed far away to the eastern west to the bifleak 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 whir 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 looked 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 Send lay between us and that quivering tumult I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and Send End of Chapter 9 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Book 1 Chapter 10 In the Storm Leatherhead is about 12 miles from Maybury Hill The scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pireford and the hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog roses The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began leaving the evening very peaceful and still We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about nine o'clock and the horse had an hours rest while I took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to their care My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive and seemed oppressed with forebodings of evil I talked to her reassuringly pointing out that the Martians were tied to the pit by sheer heaviness and at the utmost could not but crawl a little out of it but she only answered in monosyllabores Had it not been for my promise to the innkeeper she would, I think, have urged me to stay in Leatherhead that night Would that I had Her face, I remember, was very white as we parted For my own part I had been feverishly excited all day something very like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilized community had got into my blood and in my heart I was not so very sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night I was even afraid that the last fuselade that I 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 and it was as hot and close as the day Overhead the clouds were driving fast out of breath stirred 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 cart Then abruptly she turned and went in leaving my cousin side by side wishing me good hap I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife's fears but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians At that time I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's fighting I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict As I came through Occam for that was the way I returned and not through Send and Old Woking I saw along the western horizon a blood red glow which as I drew nearer crept slowly up the sky The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there with masses of black and red smoke Ripley Street was deserted and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life but I narrowly escaped an accident at the corner of the road to 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 nor do I know if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely or deserted and empty or harassed and watching against the terror of the night From Ripley until I came through 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 Church the glare came into view again and the trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me Then I heard midnight peeling out from Pireford Church behind me and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill with its treetops and roofs black and sharp against the road Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit to the road about me with the distant woods towards Adelston I felt a tug at the reins I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green fire suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left It was the third falling star Close on its apparition and blindingly violent by contrast danced out of the first lightning of the gathering storm and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead The horse took the bit between its teeth and bolted A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill and down this we clattered Once the lightning had begun it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen The thunder clapped treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations The flickering light was blinding and confusing and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as I drove down the slope At first I regarded little but the road before me and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill At first I took it for the wet roof of a house but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement It was an elusive vision A moment of bewildering darkness and then in a flashlight daylight the red masses of the orphanage near the crest of the hill and to the pine trees and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright and this thing I saw how can I describe it A monstrous tripod higher than many houses striding over the young pine trees and smashing them aside in its career a walking engine of glittering metal striding now across the heather articulate ropes of steel dangling from it and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot thunder a flash and it came out vividly healing over one way with two feet in the air to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed with the next flash 100 yards nearer Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground That was the impression these instant flashes gave but instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand Then suddenly the trees in the pinewood were parted as brittle reeds were parted by a man thrusting through them they were snapped off and driven headlong and a second huge tripod appeared rushing as it seemed headlong towards me and I was galloping hard to meet it at the sight of the second monster my nerve went all together not stopping to look round again I wrenched the horse's 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 and fell heavily into the water I crawled out 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 bull 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 seen nearer the thing was incredibly strange for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way the machine it was with a ringing metal pace and long flexible glittering tentacles one of which gripped a young pine tree swinging and rattling about its strange body it picked its road as it went striding along and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints the monster swept by me and in an instant it was gone so much I saw then all vaguely from the flickering of the lightning in blinding highlights and dense black shadows as it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder hello hello and in another minute it was with its companion half a mile away stooping over something in the field I have no doubt this thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from Mars for some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching by the intermittent light these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops a thin hail was now beginning and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again now and then came a gap in the lightning and the night swallowed them up I was soaked with hail above and puddle to below it was some time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to a drier position or think at all about my imminent peril not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood surrounded by a patch of potato garden I struggled to my feet at last and crouching and making use of every chance of cover I made a run for this I hammered at the door but I could not make the people here if there were any people inside and after a time I desisted and availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way succeeding in crawling unobserved by these monstrous machines into the pine woods towards Maybury under cover of this I pushed on wet and shivering now towards my own house I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath it was very dark indeed in the wood for the lightning was now becoming infrequent and the hail which was pouring down in a torrent fell in columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage if I had fully realized the meaning I should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street Cobham and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead but that night the strangeness of things about me and my physical wretchedness prevented me for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin deafened and blinded by the storm I had a vague idea of going on to my own house and that was as much motive as I had I staggered through the trees fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plank and finally smashed out into the lane that ran down from the college arms I say splashed for the stormwater 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 wit sufficiently to speak to him so heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to win my way up the hill I went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its palings near the top I stumbled upon something soft and by a flash of lightning saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair of boots before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay the flicker of light had passed I stood over him waiting for the next flash when it came I saw that he was a sturdy man cheaply but not shabbily dressed his head was bent under his body and he lay crumpled up close to the fence as though he had been flung violently against it overcoming the repugnance natural to one who has never before touched a dead body I stooped and turned over him 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 landlord of the spotted dog whose conveyance I had taken I stepped over him gingerly and pushed up the hill I made my way by the police station and the college arms towards my own house nothing was burning on the hillside though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail so far as I could see by the flashes the houses about me were mostly uninjured by the college arms a deep heap lay in the road down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet but I had not the courage to shout or go to them I let myself in with my latch-key closed, locked and bolted the door staggered to the foot of the staircase and sat down my imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters and of the dead body smashed against the fence I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall shivering violently end of chapter 10 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 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 pours of water about me on the stair carpet I got up almost mechanically into the dining room and drank some whiskey and then I moved to change my clothes after I had done that I went upstairs to my study but why I did so I do not know the window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards Horswell Common in the hurry of our departure this window had been left open the passage was dark and by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed the silver room seemed impenetrably dark I stopped short in the doorway the thunderstorm had passed the towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone and very far away, lit by a vivid red glare the common about the sand pits was visible across the light huge black shapes grotesque and strange moved busily to and fro it seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flames swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes I could not see what they were doing not the clear form of them nor recognize the black objects that they were busyed upon neither could I see the nearer fire though the reflection of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study a sharp resinous tang of burning was in the air I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window as I did so the view opened out until on the one hand it reached to the houses about Woking station and on the other to the child and blackened pine woods of Byfleet there was a light down below the hill on the railway near the arch and several of the houses along the Maybury road and streets near the station were glowing ruins the light upon the railway puzzled me at first there were a black heap and a vivid glare and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs then I perceived this was a wrecked train the four parts smashed and on fire the hinder carriages still on the rails between these three main centers of light the houses the train and the burning county towards Cobham stretched irregular patches of dark country broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground it was the strangest spectacle that black expanse set with fire it reminded me more than anything else of the potteries at night at first I could distinguish no people at all though I peered intently for them later I saw against the light of Woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across the line and this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years this fiery chaos what had happened in the last seven hours I still did not know nor did I know though I was beginning to guess the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps that had seen disgorge 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 building using much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body I began to compare the things to human machines to ask myself for the first time in my life how an iron clad 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 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 under the window and peering up where are you going? I asked God knows are you trying to hide? that's it come into the house I said I went down, unfastened the door and let him in and locked the door again I could not see his face he was hapless 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 they wiped us out! simply wiped us out! he repeated again and again he followed me almost mechanically into the dining room takes a whisky I said pouring out a stiff dose he drank it then he abruptly sat down before the table put his head on his arms and began to sob and weep like a little boy in a perfect passion of emotion while I with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair stood beside him wondering it was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my questions and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly he was a driver in the artillery and had only come into action about seven at that time firing was going on across the common and it was said the first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting machines I had seen the gun he drove had been unlimbered near Horsel in order to command the sand pits and it's arrival it was that had precipitated the action as the limber gunners went to the rear his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down throwing him into a depression of the ground at the same moment the gun exploded behind him the ammunition blew up there was a fire all about him and he found himself lying under a heap of charred dead men and horses I lay still he said scared out of my wits with the four quarter of a horse atop of me we've been wiped out and the smell good god like burnt meat I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse and there I had to lie until I felt better just like parade it had been a minute before then stumbles bang swish wiped out he said he had hid under the dead horse for a long time peeping out furtively across the common the cardigan men had tried a rush in skirmishing order at the pit simply to be swept out of existence then the monster had risen to its feet and begun to walk leisurely to and fro across the common among the few fugitives with its head like hood turning exactly like the head of a cowled human being a kind of arm carried a complicated metal case about which green flashes scintillated and out of the funnel of this there smoked the heat ray in a few minutes there was so far as the soldier could see not a living thing left upon the common and every bush and tree upon it already a blackened skeleton was burning the whose ours had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground and he saw nothing of them he heard the Martians rattle for a time and then become still the giant saved working 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 Horsal he managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road and so escaped to Woking there his story became ejaculatory the place was impassable it seems there were a few people alive there frantic for the most part and many burned and scolded he was turned aside by the fire and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned he saw this one 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 had made off towards Woking Village and Send he had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains near the railway arch smashed and the water bubbling out like a spring upon the road that was the story I got from him bit by bit he grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen he had eaten no food since midday he told me early in his narrative and I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room it's 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 became darkly out of the darkness and the trampled bushes and broken rose trees out 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 out again of the open window in one night the valley had become a valley of ashes the fires had dwindled now where flames had been there were now streamers of smoke but the countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn yet here and there some object had had the luck to escape a white railway signal here the end of a greenhouse there was a flash 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 cows 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 vapor streamed up and out of it towards the brightening dawn streamed up, world, broke and vanished beyond were the pillars of fire about Cobham they became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day end of chapter 11 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 12 What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Sheperton As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we had watched the Martians and went very quietly downstairs the artillery man agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in he proposed he said to make his way London would and then to rejoin his battery Number 12 of the Horse Artillery My plan was to return at once to Leatherhead and so greatly had the strength of the Martians impressed me that I had determined to take my wife to Newhaven and go with her out of the country forthwith for I already perceived clearly that the country about London must inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures as these could be destroyed between us and Leatherhead however lay the third cylinder with its guarding giants had I been alone I think I should have taken my chances and struck across country but the artillery man dissuaded me it's no kindness to the right sort of wife he said to make her a widow and in the end I agreed to go with him under cover of the woods northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him thence I would make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead I should have started at once but my companion had been in active service and he knew better than that he made me ransack the house for a flask which he filled with whiskey and we lined every available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat then we crept out of the house and ran as quickly as we could down the ill-made road by which I had come overnight the houses seemed deserted in the road lay a group of three charred bodies close together struck dead by the heat ray and here and there were things that people had dropped a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon and the like poor valuables at the corner turning up towards the post office a little cart filled with boxes and furniture and horseless healed over on a broken wheel a cash box had been hastily smashed open and thrown under the debris except the lodge at the orphanage which was still on fire none of the houses had suffered very greatly here the heat ray had shaved the chimney tops and passed yet save ourselves there did not seem to be a living soul on Maybury Hill the majority of the inhabitants had escaped I suppose by way of the old Woking Road the road I had taken when I drove to Leatherhead or they had hidden we went down the lane by the body of the man in black sodden now from the overnight hail and broke into the woods at the foot of the hill we pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a soul the woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of woods for the most part the trees had fallen but a certain proportion still stood dismal grey stems with dark brown foliage instead of green on our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees it had failed to secure its footing in one place the woodman had been at work on Saturday trees felled and freshly trimmed lay in a clearing with heaps of sawdust by the sawing machine and its engine hard by was a temporary hut deserted there was not a breath of wind this morning and everything was strangely still even the birds were hushed and as we hurried along I and the artillery man talked in whispers and looked now and again over our shoulders once or twice we stopped to listen after a time we drew near the road and as we did so we heard the clatter of hooves and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers riding slowly towards awoking we hailed them and they halted while we hurried towards them it was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of the 8th hussars with a stand like a theodolite which the artillery man told me was a heliograph you are the first men I've seen coming this way this morning said the lieutenant what's brewing his voice and face were eager the men behind him stared curiously the artillery men jumped down the bank into the road and saluted gun destroyed last night sir had been hiding trying to rejoin battery sir you'll come inside to the martians I expect about half a mile along this road what the dickens are they like asked the lieutenant giants in armor sir 100 feet high free legs and a body like aluminium with a mighty great head in a hood sir get out said the lieutenant what confounded nonsense you'll see sir they carry a kind of boxer that shoots fire and strikes you dead what do you mean a gun no sir and the artillery man began a vivid account of the heat ray half way through the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at me I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road it's perfectly true I said well said the lieutenant I suppose it's my business to see to it too look here to the artillery man we're detailed here clearing people out of their houses you'd better go along and report yourself to Brigadier General Marvin and tell him all you know he's at waybridge know the way I do I said and he turned his horse southward again half a mile you say said he at most I answered and pointed over the tree top southward he thanked me and rode on and we saw them no more father along we came upon a group of three women and two children in the road busy clearing out a labourer's cottage they had got hold of a little hand truck and were piling it up with unclean looking bundles and shabby furniture they were all too assiduously engaged to talk to us as we passed by byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees and found the country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight we were far beyond the range of the heat ray there and had it not been for the silent desertion of some of the houses the stirring movement of packing in others and the knot of soldiers standing on the bridge over the railway and staring down the line towards Woking the day would have seemed like any other Sunday several farm wagons and carts were moving creakily along the road to Adelston and suddenly through the gate of a field we saw across a stretch of flat meadow 612 pounders standing neatly at equal distances pointing towards Woking the gunners stood by the guns waiting and the ammunition wagons were at a business like distance the men stood almost as if under inspection that's good, said I they will get one fair shot at any rate the artillerymen hesitated at the gate I shall go on, he said farther on towards Waybridge just over the bridge there were a number of men in white fatigue jackets throwing up a long rampart and more guns behind his bows and arrows against the lightning anyhow said the artillerymen they haven't seen that fire beam yet the officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over the tree top south westward and the men digging would stop every now and again to stare in the same direction Byfleet was in tumult people packing and a score of who's ours some of them dismounted, some on horseback were hunting them about three or four black government wagons with crosses in white circles and an old omnibus among other vehicles were being loaded in the village street there were scores of people most of them sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes the soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realize the gravity of their position we saw one shriveled old fellow with a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids, angry expostulating with a corporal who would leave them behind I stopped and gripped his arm do you know what's over there I said pointing at the pine trees that hid the Martians eh? said he turning I was explaining, this is valuable death I shouted death is coming, death and leaving him to digest that if he could I harried on after the artillery man at the corner I looked back the soldier had left him and he was still standing by his box with the pots of orchids on the lid of it and staring vaguely over the trees no one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established the whole place was in such confusion as I have never seen in any town before carts, carriages everywhere the most astonishing miscellany of conveyances and horse flesh the respectable inhabitants of the place men in golf and boating costumes wives prettily dressed were packing riverside loafers energetically helping children excited and for the most part highly delighted at this astonishing variation of their Sunday experience in the midst of it all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration and his bell was jangling out above the excitement I and the artillery men seated on the step of the drinking fountain made a very passable meal on what we had brought with us patrols of soldiers here no longer who's ours but grenadiers in white were warning people to move now or take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began we saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages the ordinary traffic had been stopped I believe in order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey and I have heard since that a savage struggle between the special trains that were put on at a later hour we remained at waybridge until midday and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near sheperton lock where the way and the Thames join part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little cart the way has a treble mouth and at this point boats are to be hired and there was a ferry across the river on the sheperton side was an inn with a lawn and beyond that the tower of sheperton church it had been replaced by a spire rose above the trees here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives as yet the flight had not grown to a panic but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross people came panting along under heavy burdens one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them with some of their household goods piled there on one man told us he meant to try to get away from sheperton station there was a lot of shouting and one man was even jesting the idea people seem to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable human beings who might attack and sack the town to be certainly destroyed in the end every now and then people would glance nervously across the way at the meadows towards jerty but everything over there was still across the Thames except just where the boats landed everything was quiet in vivid contrast to the Surrey side the people who landed there from the boats left down the lane the big ferry boat had just made a journey three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn staring and jesting at the fugitives without offering to help the inn was closed as it was now within prohibited hours what's that? cried the boatman and shut up you fool said a man near to a yopping dog then the sound came again this time from the direction of churchy a muffled thud the sound of a gun the fighting was beginning almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right unseen because of the trees took up the chorus firing heavily one after the other everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle near us and yet invisible to us nothing was to be seen say flat meadows cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part and silvery pollard willows motionless in the warm sunlight this soldier took stop him said a woman beside me doubtfully a haziness rose over the tree tops then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river a puffer smoke that jerked up into the air and hung and forthwith the ground heaved underfoot and a heavy explosion shook the air smashing two or three windows in the houses near and leaving us astonished here they are shouted a man in a blue jersey yonder do you see them yonder quickly one after the other one two three four of the armored martians appeared far away over the little trees the flat meadows that stretched towards church and striding hurriedly towards the river little cowled figures they seemed at first going with a rolling motion as fast as flying birds then advancing obliquely towards us came a fifth their armored bodies glittered in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the guns growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer one on the extreme left the remotest that is flourished a huge case high in the air and the ghostly terrible heat ray I had already seen on Friday night smoke towards churchy and struck the town at the sight of these strange swift and terrible creatures the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for the moment horror struck there was no screaming or shouting but a silence then a horse murmur and a movement of feet a splashing from the water a man too frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden a woman thrust at me with a hand and rushed past me I turned with the rush of the people but I was not too terrified for thought the terrible heat ray was in my mind to get underwater that was it get underwater I shouted unheeded I faced about again and rushed towards the approaching Martians rushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water others did the same a boatload of people putting back came leaping out as I rushed past the stones under my feet were muddy and slippery and the river was so low that I ran perhaps 20 feet scarcely waist deep then as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of hundred yards away I flung myself forward under the surface the splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the river sounded like thunderclaps in my ears people were landing hastily on both sides of the river but the Martian machine took no more notice of the moment of the people running this way and that then a man would have the confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot had kicked when half suffocated I raised my head above water the Martians hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing across the river and as it advanced it swung loose what must have been the generator of the heat ray in another moment it was on the bank and in a stride wading halfway across the knees of the foremost leg bent at the father bank and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height again close to the village of Shepperton forthwith the six guns which unknown to anyone on the right bank had been hidden behind the outskirts of the village fired simultaneously the sudden near concussion the last close upon the first made my heart jump the monster was already raising the case generating the heat ray as the first shell burst six shards above the hood I gave a cry of astonishment I saw and thought nothing of the other four Martian monsters my attention was riveted on the nearest incident simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted round in time to receive but not in time to dodge the fourth shell the shell burst clean in the face of the thing the hood bulge flashed was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and glittering metal hit shouted I with something between a scream and a cheer I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me I could have leapt out of the water with that momentary exultation the decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant but it did not fall over it recovered its balance by a miracle and no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the heat ray now rigidly upheld it reeled swiftly upon shepherden the living intelligence the Martian within the hood was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven and the thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction it drove along in a straight line incapable of guidance it struck the terror of shepherden church smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done swerved aside blundered on and collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of my sight a violent explosion shook the air and a spout of water, steam, mud and shattered metal shot far up into the sky as the camera of the heat ray hit the water the latter had immediately flashed into steam in another moment a huge wave like a muddy tidal bore but almost scoldingly hot came sweeping round the bend upstream I saw people struggling shorewards and heard their screaming and shouting faintly above the seething and roar of the Martians collapse for a moment I heeded nothing of the heat forgot the need of self-preservation I splashed through the tumultuous water pushing aside a man in black to do so until I could see round the bend half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves the fallen Martian came into sight downstream lying across the river and for the most parts have merged thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see intermittently and vaguely the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud and froth into the air the tentacles swayed and struck like living arms and say for the helpless purposeless of these movements it was as if some wounded thing was struggling for its life amid the waves enormous quantities of a ruddy brown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine my attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing towns a man knee deep near the towing path was shouting inaudibly to me and pointed looking back I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey the shepherd and guns spoke to this time unavailingly at that I ducked at once under the water and holding my breath until movement was an agony blundered painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could the water was a tumult about me and rapidly growing hotter when for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the hair and water from my eyes the steam was rising in a whirling white fog that at first hit the Martians altogether the noise was deafening then I saw them dimly colossal figures of grey magnified by the mist they had passed by me and two were stooping over the throbbing tumultuous ruins of their comrade the third and fourth stood beside him in the water one perhaps 200 yards from me and the other towards laylam the generators at the heat rays waved high and the hissing beams smoked down this way and that the air was full of sound a deafening and confusing conflict of noises the clangorous din of the Martians the crusher falling houses the thud of trees fences sheds flashing into flame and the crackling and roaring of fire dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river and as the heat ray went to and fro over waybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white that gave place at once a smoky dance of lurid fames the nearer houses stood still intact awaiting their fate shadowy faint and pallid in the steam with the fire behind them going to and fro for a moment perhaps I stood there breast high in the almost boiling water dumbfounded at my position hopeless of escape through the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out of the water through the reeds like little frogs hurrying through the grass from the advance of a man in utter dismay on the towpath then suddenly the white flashes of the heat ray came leaping towards me the houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch and darted out flames the trees changed to fire with a roar the ray flickered up and down the towing path licking off the people who ran this way and that and came down to the water's edge not 50 yards from where I stood it swept across the river to sheperton and the water in its track rose in a boiling wheel crested with steam I turned shoreward in another moment the huge wave well nigh at the boiling point had rushed upon me I screamed aloud and scolded half-blinded agonized I staggered through the leaping hissing water towards the shore had my foot stumbled it would have been the end I fell helplessly in full sight of the Martians upon the broad bare gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the way and the Thames I expected nothing but death I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down with a score of yards of my head driving straight into the loose gravel whirling it this way and that and lifting again of a long suspense and then of the fall carrying the debris of their comrade between them now clear and then presently faint through the veil of smoke receding interminably as it seemed to me across a vast space of river and meadow and then very slowly I realized that by a miracle I had escaped End of Chapter 12 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 13 How I Fell in with the Curat After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons the Martians retreated to their original position on Horsel Common and in their haste and encumbered with the debris of their smash companion they no doubt overlooked many such a stray and negligible victim as myself Had they left their comrade and pushed on forthwith there was nothing at that time between them and London but batteries of 12 pounder guns and they would certainly have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their approach as sudden, dreadful and destructive their advent would have been as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago But they were in no hurry followed cylinder on its interplanetary flight every 24 hours brought them reinforcement and meanwhile the military and naval authorities now fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists worked with furious energy Every minute a fresh gun came into position until before twilight every cops every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond masked an expectant black muzzle through the charred and desolate area perhaps 20 square miles altogether that encircled the Martian encampment on horse or common through charred and ruined villages among the green trees through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a day ago pine spinners crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs that were presently to warn the gunners of the Martian approach But the Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger of human proximity and not a man ventured within a mile of either cylinder savor the price of his life It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the afternoon in going to and fro transferring everything from the second and third cylinders the second in Adelston golf links and the third at Pireford to their original pit on horse or common Over that above the blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretch far and wide stood one ascentinal while the rest abandoned their vast fighting machines and descended into the pit they were they were hard at work they were hard at work there far into the night and the towering pillar of dense green smoke that rose there from could be seen from the hills about Merrow and even it is said from Banstead and Epson Downes and while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for the next sally and in front of me humanity gathered for the battle I made my way with infinite pains and labour and the fire and smoke of burning way bridge towards London I saw an abandoned boat very small and remote drifting downstream and throwing off the most of my sudden clothes I went after it and gained it and so escaped out of that destruction there were no oars in the boat but I contrived to paddle as well as my parboard hands would allow down the river towards Haliford and Walton going very tediously and continually looking behind me as you may well understand I followed the river because I considered that the water gave me the best chance of escape should these giants return the hot water from the Martians overthrow drifted downstream with me so that for the best part of a mile I could see little of either bank once however I made out a string of black figures hurrying across the meadows from the direction of way bridge Haliford it seems was deserted and several of the houses facing the river were on fire it was quite tranquil quite desolate under the hot blue sky with the smoke and little threads of flame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon never before had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive crowd a little farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and glowing and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late field of hay for a long time I drifted so painful and weary was I after the violence I had been through and so intense the heat upon the water then my fears got the better of me again and I resumed my paddling the sun scorched my bare back at last as the bridge at Walton was coming into sight round the bend my fever and faintness overcame my fears and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down deadly sick among the long grass I suppose the time was then about four or five o'clock I got up presently walked perhaps half a mile without meeting a soul and then laid down again in the shadow of a hedge I seem to remember talking wanderingly to myself during that last spurt I was also very thirsty and bitterly regretted I had drunk no more water it is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife I cannot account for it but my impotent desire to reach leatherhead worried me excessively I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate so that probably I dozed I became aware of him as a seated figure in a soot smudge shirt sleeves and with his upturned clean shaven face staring at a faint flickering that danced over the sky the sky was what is called a mackerel sky rose and rose of faint down plumes of cloud just tinted with the midsummer sunset I sat up and at the rustle of my motion he looked at me quickly have you any water? I asked abruptly he shook his head you have been asking for water for the last hour he said for a moment we were silent taking stock of each other I dare say he found me a strange enough figure naked say for my water soaked trousers and socks scolded and my face and shoulders blackened by the smoke his face was a fair weakness his chin retreated and his hair laying crisp almost flux and curls on his low forehead his eyes were rather large pale blue and blankly staring he spoke abruptly looking vacantly away from me what does this mean? he said what do these things mean? I stared at him and made no answer he extended a thin white hand and spoke in almost a complaining tone why are these things permitted? what sins have we done? the morning service was over I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon and then the fire earthquake death as if it was Sodom and Gomorrah all our work all done all the work what are these Martians? what are we? I answered clearing my throat he gripped his knees and turned to look at me again for half a minute perhaps he stared silently I was walking through the roads to clear my brain he said and suddenly fire earthquake death he relapsed into silence with his chin now sunken almost to his knees presently he began waving his hand all the work all the Sunday schools what have we done? what has Weybridge done? everything gone everything destroyed the church we rebuilt it only three years ago gone swept out of existence why? another pause and he broke out again like one demented the smoke of her burning forever and ever he shouted his eyes flamed and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of Weybridge by this time I was beginning to take his measure the tremendous tragedy in which he had been involved it was evident he was a fugitive from Weybridge had driven him to the very verge of his reason are we far from summary? I said in a matter of fact tone what are we to do? he asked are these creatures everywhere? has the earth been given over to them? are we far from summary? only this morning I officiated at early celebration things have changed I said quietly you must keep your head there is still hope hope? yes plenty for hope for all this destruction I began to explain my view of our position he listened at first but as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their former stare and his regard wandered from me this must be the beginning of the end he said interrupting me the end, the great and terrible day of the lord when men shall hide upon the mountains and the rocks fall upon them and hide them hide them from the face of him that sits upon the throne I began to understand the position I ceased my laboured reasoning struggled to my feet and standing over him laid my hand on his shoulders be a man I said you are scared out of your wits what good is religion if it collapses under calamity? think of what earthquakes and floods wars and volcanoes have done before to men did you think god had exempted waybridge? he is not an insurance agent for a time he sat in blank silence but how can we escape? he asked suddenly they are invulnerable they are pitiless neither the one nor perhaps the other I answered and the mighty they are all sane and wary should we be one of them was killed yonder not three hours ago killed he said staring about him how can gods ministers be killed? I saw it happen I proceeded to tell him we have chance to come in for the thick of it said I and that is all what is that flicker in the sky? he asked abruptly I told him it was the heliograph signalling that it was the sign of human help and effort in the sky we are in the midst of it I said quiet as it is that flicker in the sky tells of the gathering storm yonder I take it are the Martians and London would where those hills rise about Richmond and Kingston and the trees give cover earthworks are being thrown up and guns are being placed presently the Martians will be coming this way again and even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a gesture listen he said from beyond the low hills across the water came the dull residents of distant guns and a remote weird crying then everything was still a cock chaffer came droning over the hedge and past us high in the west the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of waybridge and shepherden and the hot still splendour of the sunset we had better follow this path I said Northwood End of chapter 13 LibriVox Recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 14 In London my younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at working he was a medical student working for an imminent examination and he had nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning papers on Saturday contained in addition to lengthy special articles on the planet Mars on life in the planets and so forth a brief and vaguely worded telegram all the more striking for its brevity The Martians alarmed by the approach of a crowd had killed a number of people with a quick firing gun so the story ran the telegram concluded with the words formidable as they seem to be the Martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen and indeed seem incapable of doing so probably this is due to the relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy on that last text their leader writer expanded very comfortably of course all the students in the Krammer's biology class to which my brother went that day were intensely interested but there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets the afternoon papers puffed scraps of news under big headlines they had nothing to tell beyond the movements of troops about the common burning of the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge until eight then the St. James Gazette in an extra special edition announced the bare fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication this was thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the line nothing more of the fighting was known that night the night of my drive to Leatherhead and back my brother felt no anxiety about us as he knew from the description in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from my house he made up his mind to run down that night to me in order as he says to see the things before they were killed he dispatched a telegram which never reached me about four o'clock and spent the evening at a music hall in London also on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm and my brother reached Waterloo in a cab on the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned after some waiting that an accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night the nature of the accident he could not ascertain indeed the railway authorities did not clearly know at that time there was very little excitement in the station as the officials failing to realise that anything further than a breakdown between by fleet and Woking junction had occurred while running the theatre trains which usually pass through Woking round by Virginia Water or Guildford they were busy making the necessary arrangements to alter the routes of the Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions a nocturnal newspaper reporter mistaking my brother for the traffic manager to whom he bears a slight resemblance waylaid and tried to interview him few people accepting the railway officials connected the breakdown with the Martians I have read in another account of these events that on Sunday morning all London was electrified by the news from Woking as a matter of fact there was nothing to justify that very extravagant phrase plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning those who did took some time to realise all that the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed the majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers the habit of personal security moreover is so deeply fixed in the Londoners mind and startling intelligence so much a matter of course in the papers that they could read without any personal tremors about 7 o'clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder and having moved about under an armour of metallic shields have completely wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses and massacred an entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment no details are known maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour the field guns have been disabled by them flying hussars have been galloping into Chertsea the Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsea or Windsor great anxiety prevails in West Surrey and earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonwood that was how the Sunday Sun put it and a clever and remarkably prompt handbook article in the referee compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly let loose in a village no one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured Martians and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be sluggish crawling creeping painfully such expressions occurred in almost all the earlier reports none of the telegrams could have been written by an eyewitness of their advance the Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came to hand some even in default of it but there was particularly nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in their possession it was stated that people of Walton and Waybridge and all the district were pouring along the roads Londonwood and that was all my brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night there he heard illusions made to the invasion and a special prayer for peace coming out he brought a referee he became alarmed at the news in this and went again to Waterloo Station to find out if communication were restored the omnibuses, carriages, cyclists and innumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the strange intelligence that the news vendors were disseminating people were interested or if alarmed only on account of the local residents at the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted the port has told him that several remarkable telegrams have been received in the morning from by fleet and Chertsey stations but that these had abruptly ceased my brother could get very little precise detail out of them there's fighting going on about Waybridge was the extent of their information the train service was now very much disorganized quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the southwestern network were standing about the station one grey-headed old gentleman came and abused the southwestern company bitterly to my brother it won't show it up he said one or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney and Kingston containing people who had gone for a day's boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air a man in a blue and white blazer addressed my brother full of strange tidings there's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things with boxes of valuables and all that he said they come from Mosley and Waybridge and Walton and they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey heavy firing and mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once because the Martians are coming we heard guns firing at Hampton Court Station but we thought it was thunder what the dickens does it all mean the Martians can't get out of their pit can they my brother could not tell him afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm led to the clients of the underground railway and that the Sunday excursionist began to return from all over the southwestern lung Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park Q and so forth at an naturally early hours but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill tempered about five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely excited by the opening of the line of communication which is almost invariably closed between the southeastern and the southwestern stations and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with soldiers these were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston there was an exchange of pleasantries you'll get eaten we're the beast tamers and so forth a little while after that a squad of police came into the station and began to clear the public off the platform and my brother went out into the street again the church bells were ringing for even song and a squad of Salvation Army lasses came singing down Waterloo Road on the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in patches the sun was just setting and the clock tower and the houses of parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it was possible to imagine a sky of gold barred with long transverse stripes of reddish purple colour there was talk of floating body men there a reservist he said he was told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west in Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still wet newspapers and staring placards dreadful catastrophe they bored one to another down Wellington Street fighting at Waybridge full description repulse of the Martians London in danger he had to give threepence for a copy of that paper then it was and then only that he realised something of the full power and terror of these monsters he learned that they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures but that they were mind swaying vast mechanical bodies that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could not stand against them they were described as vast spider like machines nearly a hundred feet high capable of the speed of an express train and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat masked batteries chiefly of field guns had been planted in the country about horse or common and especially between the Woking District and London five of the machines have been seen moving towards the Thames and one by a happy chance had been destroyed in the other cases the shells had missed and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the heat rays heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned but the tone of the dispatch was optimistic the Martians had been repulsed they were not invulnerable they had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again in the circle about Woking signalers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides guns were in rapid transit from Windsor Portsmouth, Oldershop, Woolwich even from the north, among others long wire guns of 95 tonnes from Woolwich altogether 116 were in position or being hastily placed chiefly covering London never before in England had there been such a vast or rapid concentration of military material any further cylinders that fell it was hoped could be destroyed at once by high explosives which were being rapidly manufactured and distributed no doubt ran the report the situation was of the strangest and gravest description but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic no doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme but at the outside there could not be more than 20 of them against our millions the authorities had reason to suppose from the size of the cylinders that at the outside there could not be more than 5 in each cylinder 15 all together and one at least was disposed of perhaps more the public would be fairly warned of the approach of danger and elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs and so with reiterated assurances of the safety in London and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty this quasi proclamation closed this was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still wet and there had been no time to add a word of comment it was curious my brother said to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place all down Wellington street people could be seen fluttering out the pink sheets and reading and the strand was suddenly noisy with the voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers they became scrambling off buses to secure copies certainly this news excited people intensely whatever their previous apathy the shutters of a map shop in the strand were being taken down my brother said and a man in his Sunday raiment lemon yellow gloves even was visible inside the window hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the glass going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square the paper in his hand my brother saw some of the fugitives in West Surrey there was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture and a cart such as Greengrocer's use he was driving in the direction of Westminster Bridge and close behind him came a hay wagon with five or six respectable looking people in it and some boxes and bundles the faces of these people were haggard and their entire appearance contrasted conspicuously with the sabbath best appearance of the people on the omnibuses people in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs they stopped to the square as if undecided which way to take and finally turned eastward along the Strand some way behind these came a man in work day clothes riding one of those old fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel he was dirty and white in the face my brother turned down towards Victoria and met a number of such people he had a vague idea he might see something of me he noticed an unusual number of police regulating traffic some of the refugees were exchanging news of people on the omnibuses one was professing to have seen the Martians boilers on stilts I tell you stride in long like men most of them were excited and animated by their strange experience beyond Victoria the public houses were doing a lively trade with these arrivals at all the street corners groups of people were reading papers talking excitedly or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors they seemed to increase as night drew on until at last the roads my brother said were like Epson High Street on a Derby day my brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory answers from most none of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man who assured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous night I come from Byfleet he said man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning and ran from door to door warning us to come away then came soldiers we went out to look and there were clouds of smoke to the south nothing but smoke and not a soul coming that way then we heard the guns at Chertsey and folks coming from Waybridge so I've locked up my house and come on at the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience about eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distantly audible all over the south of London my brother could not hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares but by striking through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly he walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent's Park about two he was now very anxious on my account and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble his mind was inclined to run even as mine had run on Saturday on military details he thought of all those silent expectant guns of the suddenly nomadic countryside he tried to imagine boilers on stilts a hundred feet high there were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford Street and several in the Marilyn Monroe but so slowly was the news spreading that Regent Street and Portland Place were full of their usual Sunday night promenades albeit they talked in groups and along the edge of Regent's Park there were as many silent couples walking out together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had been the night was warm and still and a little oppressive of guns continued intermittently and after midnight there seemed to be sheet lightning in the south he read and reread the paper fearing the worst had happened to me he was restless and after supper prowled out again aimlessly he returned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination notes he went to bed a little after midnight and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door knockers feet running in the street there was a giant drumming and a clamour of bells red reflections danced on the ceiling for a moment he lay astonished wondering whether day had come or the world had gone mad then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window his room was an attic and as he thrust his head out up and down the street there were a dozen echoes of the noise of his window sash and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared inquirers were being shouted they are coming! bolder policemen hammering at the door they are coming! and hurried to the next door the sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany street barracks and every church with an earshot was hard at work killing sleep with a vehement disorderly toxin there was a noise of doors opening and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from darkness into yellow illumination up the street came galloping a closed carriage bursting abruptly into noise at the corner rising into a clattering climax under the window and dying away slowly in the distance close on the rear of this came a couple of cabs the forerunners of a long procession of flying vehicles going for the most part to chalk farm station where the north-western special trains were loading up instead of coming down the gradient into Euston for a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment watching the policemen hammering at door after door and delivering their incomprehensible message then the door behind him opened and the man who lodged across the landing came in dressed only in shirt, trousers and slippers his braces loose about his waist his hair disordered from his pillow what the devil is it he asked a fire white devil of a row they both craned their heads out of the window straining to hear what the policemen were shouting people were coming out of the side streets and standing in groups at the corners talking what the devil's it all about said my brother's fellow lodger my brother answered him vaguely and began to dress running with each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing excitement and presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came bawling into the street London in danger of suffocation the Kingston and Richmond defences forced fearful massacre in the Thames valley and all about him in the rooms below in the houses on each side and across the road and behind in the park terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of Mariliban and the Westbourne Park District and St Pancras and westward and northward in Kilburn and St Johnswood and Hampstead and eastward in Shawditch and Highbury and Hackerton and Hoxton and indeed through all the vastness of London from Ealing to East Ham people were rubbing their eyes and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of fear blew through the streets it was the dawn of the great panic London which had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert was awakened in the small hours of Monday morning to a vivid sense of danger unable from his window to learn what was happening my brother went down and out into the street just as the sky between the parapets of the houses grew pink with the early dawn the flying people on foot and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment black smoke he heard people crying and again black smoke the contagion of such and the unanimous fear was inevitable as my brother hesitated on the doorstep he saw another news vendor approaching and got a paper forthwith the man was running away with the rest and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran a grotesque mingling of profit and panic and from this paper my brother read that catastrophic dispatch of the commander in chief the Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets they have smothered our batteries destroyed Richmond, Kingston and Wimbledon and are advancing slowly towards London destroying everything on the way it is impossible to stop them there is no safety from the black smoke but in instant flight that was all but it was enough the whole population of the great six million city were stirring slipping running presently it will be pouring on mass northward black smoke the voices cried fire the bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult a cart carelessly driven smashed amid shrieks and curses against the water trough up the street sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the houses and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps and overhead the dawn was growing brighter clear and steady and calm he heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms and up and down stairs behind him his landlady came into the door loosely wrapped in a dressing gown and shawl her husband followed ejaculating as my brother began to realise the import of all these things he turned hastily to his own room put all his available money into the towns altogether into his pockets and went out again into the streets end of chapter 14 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 15 What Had Happened in Surrey While the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford and while my brother was watching the fugitive stream over Westminster Bridge that the Martians had resumed the offensive so far as one can ascertain from the conflicting accounts that had been put forth the majority of them remained busy with preparations in the horse or pit until nine that night hiring on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of green smoke but three certainly came out about eight o'clock and advancing slowly and cautiously made their way through Byfleet and Pireford towards Ripley and Waybridge and so came in sight of the expectant batteries against the setting sun these Martians did not advance in a body but in a line each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow they communicated with one another by means of a siren-like howl running up and down the scale of one note to another it was this howling and firing of guns at Ripley and St George's Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford the Ripley gunners and seasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a position fired one wild premature ineffectual volley and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village while the Martian without using his heat ray walked serenely over their guns stepped gingerly among them passed in front of them and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Paines Hill Park which he destroyed the St George's Hill men however were better led or of a better metal hidden in a pine wood as they were they seemed to have been quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them they laid their guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade and fired at about a thousand yards range the shells flashed all round him and he was seen to advance a few paces stagger and go down everybody yelled together and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste the overthrown Martians set up a prolonged allulation and immediately a second glittering giant answering him appeared over the trees to the south it would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells the whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground and simultaneously both his companions brought their heat rays to bear on the battery the ammunition blew up the pine trees all about the guns the fire and only one of two of the men who were already running over the crest of the hill escaped after this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted and the scouts who were watching them reported that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour the Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood a small brown figure oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight and apparently engaged in the repair of his support about nine he had finished for his cowl was then seen above the trees again it was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other Martians each carrying a thick black tube a similar tube was handed out to each of the three and the seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between St George's hill, waybridge and the village of Send south west of Ripley a dozen rockets sprang out from the hills before them so soon as they began to move and worn the waiting batteries about Dytton and Isha at the same time four of their fighting machines similarly armed with tubes crossed the river and two of them black against the western sky came into sight of myself and the curate as we hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs north out of Halliford they moved as it seemed to us upon a cloud for a milky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height at this site the curate cried faintly in his throat and began running but I knew it was no good running from a Martian and I turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the broad ditch by the side of the road he looked back, saw what I was doing and turned to join me the two halted the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury the remota being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star away towards Staines the occasional howling of the Martians had ceased they took up their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute silence it was a crescent with 12 miles between its horns never since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still to us an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the Darkling Knight lit only as it was by the slender moon the stars the afterglow of the daylight and the ruddy glare from St George's Hill and the woods of Payne's Hill but facing that crescent elsewhere at Staines, Houndslow, Ditten, Isher, Occam behind hills and woods south of the river and across the flatgrass meadows to the north of it wherever a cluster of trees or village houses gave sufficient cover the guns were waiting the signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and vanished and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a tense expectation the Martians had but to advance into the line of fire and instantly those motionless black forms of men those guns glittering so darkly in the early night would explode into a thunderous fury of battle no doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds even as it was uppermost in mine was the riddle how much they understood of us did they grasp that we in our millions were organised, disciplined, working together or did they interpret our spurts of fire the sudden stinging of our shells our steady investment of their encampment as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees did they dream they might exterminate us at that time no one knew what food they needed a hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that vast sentinel shape and in the back of my mind was the sense of all the huge unknown and hidden forces London would had they prepared pitfalls were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare would the Londoners have the heart and courage to make great Moscow of their mighty province of houses then after an interminable time as it seemed to us crouching and peering through the hedge came a sound like the distant concussion of a gun another nearer and then another and then the Martian beside us raised his tube on high and discharged it gun wise with a heavy report that made the ground heave the one towards Steins answered him there was no flash no smoke simply that loaded detonation I was so excited by these heavy minute guns following one another that I so far forgot my personal safety and my scolded hands as to clamber up into the hedge and stare towards sundry as I did so a second report followed and a big projectile hurt it overhead towards Hounslow I expected at least to see smoke or fire or some such evidence of its work but all I saw was the deep blue sky above with one solitary star and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath and there have been no crash no answering explosion the silence was restored the minute lengthened to three what's happened said the curate standing up beside me heaven knows said I a bat flickered by and vanished a distant tumult of shouting began and ceased I looked again at the Martian and saw he was now moving eastward along the riverbank with a swift rolling motion every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring upon him but the evening calm was unbroken the figure of the Martian grew smaller as he receded and presently the mist and the gathering night had swallowed him up by a common impulse we clambered higher towards somebody was a dark appearance as though a conical hill had suddenly come into being there hiding our view of the farther country and then remota across the river over Walton we saw another such summit these hill-like forms grew lower and broader even as we stared moved by a sudden thought I looked northward and there I perceived a third of these cloudy black copches had risen everything had suddenly become very still far away to the southeast marking the quiet we heard the Martians hooting to one another and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of their guns but the earthly artillery made no reply now at that time we could not understand these things but later I was to learn the meaning of these ominous copches that gathered in the twilight each of the Martians standing in the great crescent I have described had discharged by means of a gun-like tube he carried a huge canister over whatever hill cops cluster of houses or other possible cover for guns chance to be in front of him some fired only one of these some too as in the case of one we had seen the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer of five at that time these canisters smashed on striking the ground they did not explode and incontinently discharged an enormous volume of heavy inky vapor coiling and pouring upwards in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country and the touch of that vapor the inhaling of its pungent wisps was death to all that breathes it was heavy this vapor heavier than the densest smoke so that after the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact it sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous abandoning the hills and streaming to the valleys and ditches and water courses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefs is wont to do and where it came upon water some chemical action occurred and the surface will be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and made way for more the scum was absolutely insoluble and it is a strange thing seeing the instant effect of the gas that no one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained the vapor did not diffuse as a true gas would it hung together in banks flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of the air and sank to the earth in the form of dust save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue of the spectrum is concerned we are still entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance once the tumultuous upheaval of this dispersion was over the black smoke clung so closely to the ground even before its precipitation that 50 feet up in the air on the roofs and upper stories of high houses and on great trees there was a chance of escaping its poison altogether as was proved even that night at street Cobham and Ditten the man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the strangeness of its coiling flow and how he looked down from the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of its inky nothingness for a day and a half he remained there weary starving and sunscorched the earth under the blue sky and against the prospect of the distant hills a velvet black expanse with red roofs green trees and later black veiled shrubs and gates barns outhouses and walls rising here and there into the sunlight but that was at street Cobham where the black vapor was allowed to remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground as a rule the Martians when it had served its purpose cleared the air of it again by wading into it and directing a jet of steam upon it this they did with the vapor banks near us as we saw in the starlight from the window of a deserted house at Upper Hallifort with a we had returned from there we could see the search lights on Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro and about 11 the windows rattled and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been put in position there these continued intermittently for the space of a quarter of an hour sending chant shots at the invisible Martians at Hampton and Ditten and then the pale beams of the electric lights vanished and were in the right red glow then the fourth cylinder fell a brilliant green meteor as I learned afterwards in Bushey Park before the guns on the Richmond and Kingston line of hills began there was a fitful cannonade far away in the southwest due I believe to guns being fired haphazard before the black vapor could overwhelm the gunners so setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasp's nest the Martians spread this strange stifling vapor over the London Wood country the horns of the Crescent slowly moved apart until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Maldon all night through their destructive tubes advanced never once after the Martian at St George's Hill was brought down did they give the artillery the ghost of a chance against them wherever there was a possibility of guns being laid for them unseen a fresh canister of the black vapor was discharged and where the guns were openly displayed the heat ray was brought to bear by midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and the glare of Kingston Hill through their light upon a network of black smoke blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as far as the eye could reach and through this two Martians slowly waded and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that they were sparing of the heat ray that night either because they had but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overall the opposition they had aroused in the latter aim they certainly succeeded Sunday night was the end of the organized opposition to their movements after that nobody of men would stand against them so hopeless was the enterprise even the crews of the torpedo boats and destroyers that have brought their quick fires up the Thames refused to stop mutinied and went down again the only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic one has to imagine as well as one may the fate of those batteries towards Asia waiting so tensely in the twilight survivors there were none one may picture the orderly expectation the officers alert and watchful the gunners ready the ammunition piled to hand the limber gunners with their horses and wagons the groups of civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted the evening stillness the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from way bridge then the dull resonance of the shots the Martians fired and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighboring fields one may picture too the sudden shifting of the attention the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong towering heavenwards turning the twilight into a palpable darkness a strange and horrible antagonist of vapor striding upon its victims men and horses near its seen dimly running shrieking falling headlong shouts of dismay the gun suddenly abandoned men choking and writhing on the ground and the swift broadening out of the opaque cone of smoke and then night and extinction nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapor hiding its dead before dawn the black vapor was pouring through the streets of Richmond and the disintegrating organism of government was with a last expiring effort rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight end of chapter 15 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 1 Chapter 16 The Exodus from London So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Mundy was dawning the stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent lashing in a foaming tumult round the railway stations banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames and hurrying northward and eastward by 10 o'clock the police organisation and by midday even the railway organisations were losing coherence, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body all the railway lines north of the Thames and the southeastern people at Cannon Street have been warned by midnight on Sunday and trains were being filled people were fighting savagely for standing room in the carriages even at two o'clock by three people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopgate Street a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station revolvers were fired people stabbed and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic exhausted and infuriated were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect and as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused to return to London the pressure of the flight drove the people in an ever thickening multitude away from the stations and along the northward running roads by midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth cutting off all escape over the bridges in its sluggish advance another bank drove over Ealing and surrounded a little island of survivors at Castle Hill alive but unable to escape after a fruitless struggle to get aboard a north-western train at Chalk Farm the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there plowed through shrieking people and a dozen stalled men fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm Road dodged across through the hurrying swarm of vehicles and had the luck to be foremost in the sack of a cycle shop the front tyre of the machine he got was punctured in dragging it through the window but he got up and off standing with no further injury than a cut wrist the steep foot of Haberstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned horses and my brother struck into bell-sized road so he got out of the fury of the panic and skirting the Edgeware Road reached Edgeware about seven fasting and wearied but well ahead of the crowd along the road people were standing in the roadway curious wondering he was passed by a number of cyclists horsemen and two motorcars a mile from Edgeware the rim of the wheel broke and the machine became unrightable he left it by the roadside and trouched through the village there were shops half opened in the main street of the place and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning he succeeded in getting some food at an inn for a time he remained in Edgeware not knowing what to do next the flying people increased in number many of them, like my brother seemed inclined to loiter in the place there was no fresh news of the invaders from Mars at that time the road was crowded but as yet far from congested most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles but there were soon motorcars, handsome cabs and carriages hurrying along and the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Olwens it was perhaps a vague idea making his way to Chelmsford where some friends of his lived that at last induced my brother to strike into a quiet lane running eastward presently he came upon a style and crossing it followed a footpath north eastward he passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not learn he saw few fugitives until in a grass lane towards High Barnard he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers he came upon them just in time to save them he heard their screams and hurrying round the corner saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony's shades in which they had been driving while a third with difficulty held the frightened pony's head one of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white was simply screaming the other, a dark slender figure slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand my brother immediately grasped the situation shouted and hurried towards the struggle one of the men desisted and turned towards him and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was unavoidable and being an expert boxer went into him forthwith and sent him down against the wheels of the shays it was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet with a kick and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the slender lady's arm he heard the clatter of hooves the whip stung across his face a third antagonist struck him between the eyes and the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in the direction from which he had come partly stunned he found himself facing the man who had held the horse's head and became aware of the shays receding from him down the lane swaying from side to side and with the women in it looking back the man before him a burly rough tried to close and he stopped him with a blow in the face then realising that he was deserted he dodged round and made off down the lane after the shays with the sturdy man close behind him and the fugitive who had turned now following remotely suddenly he stumbled and fell his immediate pursuer went headlong and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists again he would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help it seems she had a revolver all this time but it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked she fired at six yards distance narrowly missing my brother the less courageous of the robbers made off and his companion followed him cursing his cowardice they both stopped in sight down the lane where the third man lay insensible take this said the slender lady and she gave my brother her revolver go back to the shays said my brother wiping the blood from his split lip she turned without a word they were both panting and they went back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony the robbers had evidently had enough of it when my brother looked again they were retreating I'll sit here said my brother if I may and he got upon the empty front seat the lady looked over her shoulder give me the reins she said and laid the whip along the pony's side in another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother's eyes so quite unexpectedly my brother found himself panting with a cut mouth a bruised jaw and bloodstained knuckles driving along an unknown lane with these two women he learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Standmore who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance he had hurried home roused the women their servant had left them two days before packed some provisions put his revolver under the seat luckily for my brother he stopped in Edgeware with the idea of getting a train there he stopped behind to tell the neighbours he would overtake them he said at about half past four in the morning and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of him they could not stop in Edgeware because of the growing traffic through the place and so they had come into this side lane that was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again near at a new barnit he promised to stay with them to do, or until the missing man arrived and professed to be an expert shop with the revolver a weapon strange to him in order to give them confidence they made a sort of encampment by the wayside and the pony became happy in the hedge he told them of his own escape out of London and all that he knew of these Martians and their ways the sun crept higher in the sky and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an uneasy state of anticipation several wayfarers came along the lane and of these my brother gathered such news as he could every broken answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had come on humanity deepened his persuasion of the immediate necessity for prosecuting this flight he urged the matter upon them we have money said the slender woman and hesitated her eyes met my brothers and her hesitation ended so have I, said my brother she explained that they had as much as 30 pounds in gold besides a 5 pound note and suggested that with that they might get upon a train at some Albans or New Barnet my brother thought that was hopeless seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains and broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and then escaping from the country altogether Mrs. Elphinstone that was the name of the woman in white would listen to no reasoning and kept calling upon George but her sister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate and at last agreed to my brother's suggestion so designing to cross the great north road they went on towards Barnet my brother leading the pony to save it as much as possible as the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively hot and underfoot a thick whitish sand grew burning and blinding so that they travelled only very slowly the hedges were grey with dust and as they advanced towards Barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew stronger they began to meet more people for the most part these were staring before them murmuring indistinct questions jaded, haggard, unclean one man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground they heard his voice and looking back at him saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things with a paroxysm of rage over he went on his way without once looking back as my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on their left carrying a child and with two other children and then passed a man in dirty black with a thick stick in one hand and a small portmanteau in the other then round the corner of the lane from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high road drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat grey with dust there were three girls eastern factory girls and a couple of little children crowded in the cart this'll take us round edge where past the driver wild eyed, white faced and when my brother told him if he turned to the left he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks my brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them and veiling the white facade of a terrace beyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas mrs. Elphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot blue sky the tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the grind of many wheels, the creaking of wagons and the staccato of hooves then came round sharply not 50 yards from the crossroads good heavens! cried mrs. Elphinstone what is this you are driving us into? my brother stopped for the main road was a boiling stream of people a torrent of human beings rushing northward one pressing on another a great bank of dust white and luminous in the blaze of the sun made everything within 20 feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses and of men and women on foot and by the wheels of vehicles of every description way! my brother heard voices crying make way it was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and the road the crowd roared like a fire and the dust was hot and pungent and indeed a little way up the road a villa was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion two men came past them then a dirty woman carrying a heavy bundle and weeping a lost retriever dog with hanging tongue circled dubiously round them scared and wretched and fled at my brother's threat so much as they could see of the road London would between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty hurrying people pent in between the villas on either side the blackheads the crowded forms grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner hurried past and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust go on! go on! cried the voices way! way! one man's hands pressed on the back of another my brother stood at the pony's head irresistibly attracted he advanced slowly pace by pace down the lane Edgeware had been a scene of confusion Chalk Farm a riotous tumult but this was a whole population in movement it is hard to imagine that host it had no character of its own the figures poured out past the corner and receded with their backs to the group in the lane along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the wheels stumbling in the ditches blundering into one another the carts and carriages crowded close upon one another making little way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the villa push on! was the cry in one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling eternity eternity his voice was hoarse and very loud I could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at the horses and quarrelled with other drivers some sat motionless staring at nothing with miserable eyes some gnawed their hands with thirst or lay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances the horses bits were covered with foam their eyes bloodshot there were cabs, carriages shopcars, wagons, beyond counting a nail cart, a road cleaner's cart marked Vestery of St. Pancras a huge timber wagon crowded with ruffs a brewer's tray rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood clear the way! cried the voices, clear the way! eternity eternity came echoing down the road there were sad haggard women tramping by well dressed with children that cried and stumbled their dainty clothes smothered in dust the weary faces smeared with tears with many of these came men sometimes helpful, sometimes luring and savage fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcasts in faded black rags wide eyed, loud voiced and foul mouthed there were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along wretched, unkempt men clothed like clerks or shopmen struggling spasmodically a wounded soldier my brother noticed men dressed in the clothes of railway porters one wretched creature in a night shirt with a coat thrown over it but varied as its composition was certain things all that host had in common there were fear and pain on their faces and fear behind them a tumult up the road a quarrel for a place in a wagon sent the whole host of them quickening their pace even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanized for a moment into renewed activity the heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude their skins were dry their lips black and cracked they were all thirsty, weary and foot sore and amid the various cries one heard disputes reproaches groans of weariness and fatigue the voices of most of them were horse and weak through it all ran a refrain way, way! the Martians are coming few stopped and came aside from that flood the lane opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening and had a delusive appearance of coming from the direction of London yet a kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth weaklings elbowed out of the stream who for the most part rested but a moment before plunging into it again a little way down the lane with two friends bending over him lay a man with a bare leg wrapped about with bloody rags he was a lucky man to have friends a little old man with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat limped out and sat down beside the trap removed his boot his sock was bloodstained shook out a pebble and hobbled on again and then a little girl of eight or nine all alone threw herself under the hedge close to my brother weeping my brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up speaking gently to her and carried her to Miss Elphinstone so soon as my brother touched her she became quite still as if frightened Ellen shrieked a woman in the crowd with tears in her voice and the child suddenly darted away from my brother crying Mother they are coming said a man on horseback riding past a long lane out of the way there board a coachman towering high and my brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane the people crashed back on one another to avoid the horse my brother pushed the pony and sheys back into the hedge and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way it was a carriage with a pole for a pair of horses but only one was in the traces my brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge one of the men came running to my brother where is there any water he said he's dying fast and very thirsty it is Lord Garrick Lord Garrick said my brother Chief Justice the water he said there may be a tap said my brother in some of the houses we have no water I dare not leave my people the man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house go on said the people thrusting at him they're coming go on then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag which split even as my brother's eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground they rolled hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses the man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap and the shafts of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling he gave a shriek and dodged back and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly way! cried the men all about him make way! so soon as the cab had passed he flung himself with both hands open he began thrusting handfuls in his pocket a horse rose close upon him and in another moment half rising he had been borne down under the horse's hooves stop! screamed my brother and pushing a woman out of his way tried to clutch the bit of the horse before he could get to it he heard a scream under the wheels and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretches back the driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother who ran round behind the cart the multitudinous shouting confused his ears the man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money unable to rise for the wheel had broken his back and his lower limbs lay limp and dead my brother stood up and yelled at the next driver and a man on a black horse came to his assistance get him out of the road said he and clutching the man's collar with his free hand my brother lugged him sideways but he still clutched after his money and regarded my brother fiercely hammering at his arm with his handful of gold go on! go on! shouted angry voices behind there was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped my brother looked up and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar there was a concussion and the black horse came staggering sideways and the cart horse pushed beside it a hoof missed my brother's foot by a hairs breath he released his grip on the fallen man and jumped back poor anger changed to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground and in a moment he was hidden and my brother was born backwards and carried past the entrance of the lane and had to fight hard in the torrent to recover it he saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes and a little child with all the child's want of sympathetic imagination staring with dilated eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still ground and crushed under the rolling wheels let us go back he shouted we cannot cross this hell he said and they went back a hundred yards the way they had come until the fighting crowd was hidden as they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet deadly white and drawn and shining with perspiration the two women sat silent crouching in their seat and shivering then beyond the bend my brother stopped again Miss Elphinstone was white and pale and her sister-in-law sat weeping to wretched even to call upon George my brother was horrified and perplexed so soon as they had retreated he realized how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing he turned to Miss Elphinstone suddenly resolute we must go that way and led the pony round again for the second time that day this girl proved her quality to force their way into the torrent of people my brother plunged into the traffic and held back a cab horse and drove the pony across its head a wagon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter from the shears in another moment they were caught and swept forward by the stream my brother with the cabman's whip marks read across his face and hands scrambled into the shears and took the reins from her point the revolver at the man behind he said giving it to her if he presses us too hard no point it at his horse then he began to look out at the road but once in the stream he seemed to lose volition to become part of that dusty route they swept through Chipping Barnet with the torrent they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the way it was din and confusion indescribable but in and beyond the town the road forks repeatedly and this to some extent relieved the stress they struck eastward through Hadley and there on either side of the road as farther on they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream some fighting to come at the water and farther on from a lull near a sparnet they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or orders trains swarming with people with men even among the coals behind the engines going northward along the great northern railway my brother supposes they must have filled outside London for at that time the furious terror of the people had rendered the central terminal impossible near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon but the violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them they began to suffer the beginnings of hunger the night was cold and none of them dared to sleep and in the evening many people came hurrying along the road near by their stopping place fleeing from unknown dangers before them and going in the direction from which my brother had come end of chapter 16 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 1 Chapter 17 The Thunder Child Had the Martians aimed only at destruction they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of London as it spread itself slowly through the home counties not only along the road through Barnett but also through Edgeware and Waltham Abbey and along the roads eastward to southend and Shuberiness and south of the Thames to deal and broad stairs poured the same frantic route if one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress I have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of the road through Chipping Barnett in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together the legendary hosts of Goths and Huns the largest armies Asia has ever seen would have been but a drop in that current and this was no disciplined march it was a stampede a stampede gigantic and terrible without order and without a goal six million people unarmed and unprovisioned driving headlong it was the beginning of the route of civilization of the massacre of mankind directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide houses, churches squares, crescents gardens already derelict spread out like a huge map and in the southward blotted over-ealing Richmond Wimbledon it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart steadily, incessantly each black splash grew and spread shooting out ramifications this way and that now banking itself against rising ground pouring swiftly over a crest into a new found valley exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper and beyond over the blue hills that rise southward at the river the glittering Martians went to and fro calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose and taking possession of the conquered country they do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralization and the destruction of any opposition they exploded any stores of powder they came upon cut every telegraph and wrecked the railways here and there they were ham-stringing mankind they seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operation and did not come beyond the central part of London all that day it is possible that a very considerable number of people in London stuck to their houses through Monday morning certain it is that many died at home suffocated by the black smoke until about midday the pool of London was an astonishing scene steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by fugitives and it is said that many who swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boat hooks and drowned about one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of the cloud of black vapor appeared between the arches of Blackfriars bridge at that the pool became a scene of mad confusion fighting and collision and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the tower bridge and the sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront people were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from above when an hour later a martian appeared beyond the cock tower and waded down the river nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse of the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell the sixth star fell at Wimbledon my brother keeping watch beside the women in the shays in a meadow saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills on Tuesday the little party still set upon getting across the sea made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester news that the martians were now in possession of the whole of London was confirmed they had been seen at Highgate and even it was said at Neesden but they did not come into my brother's view until the morrow that day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need of provisions as they grew hungry the rights of property ceased to be regarded farmers were out to defend their cattle sheds granaries and ripening root crops with arms in their hands a number of people now, like my brother had their faces eastward and there were some desperate souls even going back towards London to get food these were chiefly people from the northern suburbs whose knowledge of the black smoke came by hearsay he heard that about half of the members of the government had gathered at Birmingham and that enormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines across the midland counties he was also told that the midland railway company had replaced the desertions of the first day's panic had resumed traffic and was running northward trains from St. Albans to relieve the congestion of the home counties there was also a placard in Chippingonga announcing that large stores of flour were available in the northern towns and that within 24 hours bread would be distributed among the starving people in the neighbourhood but this intelligence did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed and the three pressed eastward all day were more of the bread distribution than this promise nor as a matter of fact did anyone else hear more of it that night fell the seventh star falling upon Primrose Hill it fell while Miss Elphinstone was watching for she took that duty alternately with my brother she saw it on Wednesday the three fugitives they had passed the night in a field of unripe wheat reached Chelmsford and there a body of the inhabitants calling itself the committee of public supply seized the pony as provisions and would get nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share in it the next day here there were rumours of Martians at Epping and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey powder mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders people were watching for Martians here from the church towers my brother very luckily for him as it chanced preferred to push on at once to the coast rather than wait for food although all three of them were very hungry by midday they passed through Tillingham which strangely enough seemed to be quite silent and deserted save for a few furtive plunderers hunting for food near Tillingham they suddenly came in sight of the sea and the most amazing crowd of shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine for after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames they came on to the Essex coast to Harwich and Walton and Clacton and afterwards to Faunès and Shubhury to bring off the people they lay in a huge sickle shaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the Nays close in shore was a multitude of fishing smacks English, Scotch, French, Dutch and Swedish steam launches from the Thames yachts, electric boats and beyond were ships of large burden a multitude of filthy colliers trim merchantmen, cattle ships passenger boats, petroleum tanks ocean tramps an old white transport even neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg and along the Blue Coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon about a couple of miles out lay an ironclad very low in the water perception like a waterlocked ship this was the Ram Thunderchild it was the only warship in sight but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea for that day there was a dead calm lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the channel fleet which hovered in an extended line steam up and ready for action across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it at the first sight of the sea Miss Elphinstone in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law gave way to panic she had never been out of England before she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country and so forth she seemed poor woman to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar she had been growing increasingly hysterical fearful and depressed during the two days journeys her great idea was to return to Stanmore things had always been well and safe at Stanmore they would find George at Stanmore it was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the beach where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames they sent a boat and drove a bargain for 36 pounds for the three the steamer was going, these men said to Ostend it was about two o'clock when my brother having paid their fares at the gangway found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his charges there was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward there were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom had expended their last money in securing a passage but the captain lay off the blackwater until five in the afternoon picking up passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded he would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of guns that began about an hour in the south as if in answer the ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags a jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels some of the passengers were of the opinion that this firing came from Shubrin-S until it was noticed that it was growing louder at the same time far away in the southeast the masts an apple-works of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea beneath clouds of back smoke but my brother's attention speedily reverted to the distant firing in the south, he fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey haze the little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping and the low-esset's coast was growing blue and hazy when a martian appeared small and faint in the remote distance advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Faun S at that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear and anger at his own delay and the paddle seemed infected with his terror every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer and stared at that distant shape higher than the trees or church towers inland and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride it was the first martian my brother had seen and he stood more amazed than terrified watching this titan advancing deliberately towards the shipping wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell away then far away beyond the crouch came another striding over some stunted trees and then yet another still farther off wading deeply through a shiny mud flat that seemed to hang half way up between sea and sky they were all stalking seaward as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between foulness and the nays in spite of the throbbing exertions of the engines of the little paddle boat and the pouring foam that her wheels flung behind her she receded with terrifying slowness from this ominous advance glancing north westward my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the approaching terror one ship passing behind another another coming round from broadside to end on steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam that was being let out launches rushing hither and thither he was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eye for anything seaward and then a swift movement of the steamboat she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing there was a shouting all about him a trampling of feet and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly the steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands his feet and soared to starboard and not a hundred yards from their healing pitching boat a vast iron bulk like the blade of a plow tearing through the water tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam that leapt towards the steamer flinging her paddles helplessly in the air then sucking her deck down almost to the waterline a douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment when his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward big iron upper works rose out of this headlong structure and from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire it was the torpedo ram thunder child steaming headlong coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again and he saw the three of them now close together and standing so far out to see that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged thus sunken and seen in remote perspective they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly it would seem they were regarding this new antagonist with astonishment to their intelligence it may be the giant was even such another as themselves the thunder child fired no gun but simply drove full speed towards them it was probably her not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did they did not know what to make of her one shell and they would have sent her to the bottom forthwith with the heat ray she was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the Martians a diminishing black bulk against the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad it hit her laboured side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward an unfolding torrent of black smoke from which the ironclad drove clear to the watchers from the steamer low in the water and with the sun in their eyes it seemed as though she were already among the Martians they saw the gaunt figure separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward and one of them raised the camera-like generator of the heat ray he held it pointing obliquely downward and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch it must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white hot iron rod through paper a flicker of frame went up through the rising steam and then the Martian reeled and staggered in another moment he was cut down and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air the guns of the thunder child sounded through the reek going off one after the other and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north and smashed a smack to matchwood but no one heeded that very much at the sight of the Martians collapsed the captain the bridge yelled inarticulately and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together and then they yelled again for surging out beyond the white tumult drove something long and black the flames streaming from its middle parts its ventilators and funnels spouting fire she was still alive the steering gear it seemed was intact and her engines working she headed straight for a second Martian and was within a hundred yards of him when the heat ray came to bear then with a violent thud a blinding flash her decks her funnels leapt upwards the Martians staggered with the violence of her explosion and in another moment the flaming wreckage still driving forward with the impetus of its pace had struck him and crumpled him like a thing of cardboard my brother shouted involuntarily a boiling tumult of steam hid everything again two shouted the captain everyone shouting the whole steamer from end to end rang with frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea the steam hung upon the water for many minutes hiding the third Martian and the coast altogether and all this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight and when at last the confusion cleared the drifting bank of black vapor intervened and nothing of the thunder child could be made out nor could the third Martian be seen but the iron clads to seawood were now quite close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat the little vessel continued to beat its way seawood and the iron clads receded slowly towards the coast which was hidden still by a marbled bank of vapor part steam part black gas eddying and combining in the strangest way the fleet of refugees were scattering to the northeast several smacks were sailing between the iron clads and the steamboat after a time and before they reached the sinking cloud bank the warships turned northward and then abruptly went about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward the coast grew faint and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of cloud that were gathering about the sinking sun then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns and a form of black shadows moving everyone struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding furnace of the west but nothing was to be distinguished clearly a mass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun the steamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense the sun sank into grey clouds and the sky flashed and darkened the evening star trembled into sight it was a deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed my brother strained his eyes something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness rushed slantingly upwards and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the western sky something flat and broad and very large that swept round in a vast curve grew smaller sank slowly and vanished again into the grey mystery of the night and as it flew it rained down darkness upon the land End of Chapter 17 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 2 The Earth Under the Martians Chapter 1 Underfoot In the first book I have wondered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at Halliford wither we fled to escape the black smoke there I will resume we stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day the day of the panic in a little island of daylight cut off by the black smoke from the rest of the world we could do nothing but wait in aching inactivity during these two weary days my mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife I figured her at Leatherhead terrified in danger mourning me already as a dead man I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off from her of all that might happen to her in my absence my cousin I knew was brave enough for any emergency but he was not the sort of man to realize danger quickly to rise promptly what was needed now was not bravery but circumspection the only consolation was to believe that the Martians were moving Londonward and away from her such vague anxieties kept the mind sensitive and painful I grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations I tired of the sight of his selfish despair after some ineffectual remonstrance I kept away from him staying in a room, evidently a children's school room containing globes, forms and copy books he followed me thither I went to a box room at the top of the house and in order to be alone with my aching miseries locked myself in we were hopelessly hemmed in by the black smoke all that day and the morning of the next there were signs of people in the next house on Sunday evening a face at a window and moving lights and later the slamming of a door but I do not know who these people were nor what became of them we saw nothing of them the next day the black smoke drifted slowly riverwood all through Monday morning creeping nearer and nearer to us driving at last along the roadway outside the house that hid us a Martian came across the fields about mid-day laying the stuff with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls smashed all the windows it touched and scolded the curate's hand as he fled out of the front room when at last we crept across the southern rooms and looked out again the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had passed over it looking towards the river we were astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of the scorched meadows for a time we did not see how this change affected our position save that we were relieved of our fear of the black smoke but later I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in and that now we might get away so soon as I realized that the way of escape was open my dream of action returned but the curate was lethargic and unreasonable we are safe here he repeated safe here I resolved to leave him with that I had wiser now from the artilleryman's teaching I sought out food and drink I had found oil and rags for my burns and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I found in one of the bedrooms when it was clear to him that I meant to go alone had reconciled myself to going alone he suddenly roused himself to come and all being quiet throughout the afternoon we started about five o'clock as I should judge along the blackened road to Sunbury in Sunbury and at intervals along the road were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes horses as well as men overturned carts and luggage all covered thickly with black dust that pool of cindery powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii we got to Hampton Court without misadventure our minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift we went through Bushey Park with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton and so we came to Twickenham these were the first people we saw away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Peterson were still a fire Twickenham was uninjured by either heat ray or black smoke and there were more people about here though none could give us news for the most part they were like ourselves taking advantage of a lull to shift their quarters I have an impression that many of the houses were still occupied by scared inhabitants too frightened even for flight here too the evidence of a hasty route was abundant along the road I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts we crossed Richmond Bridge about half past eight we hurried across the exposed bridge of course but I noticed floating down the stream a number of red masses some many feet across I did not know what these were there was no time for scrutiny and I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved here again on the surrey side were black dust that had once been smoke and dead bodies a heap near the approach to the station but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we were some way towards Barnes we saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a side street towards the river but otherwise it seemed deserted up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly outside the town of Richmond there was no trace of the black smoke then suddenly as we approached Q came a number of people running and the upper works of a Martian fighting machine loomed in sight over the house tops not a hundred yards away from us we stood aghast at our danger and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have perished we were so terrified that we dared not go on but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden there the curet crouched weeping silently and refusing to stir again but my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest and in the twilight I ventured out again I went through a shrubbery and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds and so emerged upon the road towards Q the curet I left in the shed but he came hurrying after me the second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did for it was manifest the Martians were about us now sooner had the curet overtaken me than we saw either the fighting machine we had seen before or another far away across the meadows in the direction of Q Lodge four or five little black figures hurried before us across the green grey of the field and in a moment it was evident this Martian pursued them with three strides he was among them and they ran radiating from his feet in all directions he used no heat ray to destroy them but picked them up one by one apparently he tossed them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder it was the first time I realized that the Martians might have any other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity we stood for a moment petrified then turned and fled through a gate right behind us into a walled garden fell into rather than have found a fortunate ditch and lay there scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were out I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage to start again no longer venturing into the road but sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations and watching keenly through the darkness he on the right and I on the left for the Martians who seemed to be all about us in one place we blundered upon a scorched and blackened area now cooling and ashen and a number of scattered dead bodies of men burned horribly about the heads and trunks but with their legs and boots mostly intact and of dead horses fifty feet perhaps behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun carriages sheen it seemed had escaped destruction but the place was silent and deserted here we happened on no dead though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place in sheen my companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst and we decided to try one of the houses the first house we entered after a little difficulty with the window was a small semi-detached villa and I found nothing eatable left in the place but some mouldy cheese there was however water to drink and I took a hatchet which promised to be useful in our next house-breaking we then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mort Lake here there stood a little white house within a walled garden well we found a store of food two loaves of bread in a pan an uncooked steak and the half of a ham I give this catalogue so precisely because as it happened we were destined to subsist on this store for the next fortnight bottled beer stood under a shelf and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuce this pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen and in this was firewood there was also a cupboard in which we found nearly a dozen of burgundy tin soups and salmon and two tins of biscuits we sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark for we dared not strike a light and ate bread and ham and drank beer out of the same bottle the curate who was still timorous and restless was now oddly enough for pushing on and I was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us it can't be midnight yet, I said and then came a blinding glare of vivid green light everything in the kitchen leapt out clearly visible in green and black and vanished again and then followed such a concussion as I have never heard before or since so close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thug behind me a clash of glass a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us and the plaster of the ceiling came down upon us smashing into a multitude of fragments upon our heads I was knocked headlong across the floor against the oven handle and stunned visible for a long time the curate told me and when I came to we were in darkness again and he with a white face as I found afterwards with blood from a cut forehead was dabbing water over me for some time I could not recollect what had happened then things came to me slowly a bruise on my temple asserted itself are you better? asked the curate in a whisper at last I answered him I sat up don't move he said smash crockery from the dresser you can't possibly move without making a noise and I found see they are outside we both sat quite silent so that we could scarcely hear each other breathing everything seemed deadly still but once something near us some plaster or broken brickwork slid down with a rumbling sound outside and very near was an intermittent metallic rattle said the curate when presently it happened again yes I said but what is it? I'm Martian said the curate I listened again it was not like the heat ray I said and for a time I was inclined to think one of the great fighting machines had stumbled against the house as I had seen one stumble against the tower of sheperton church our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or four hours until the dawn came we scarcely moved and then the light filtered in not through the window which remained black but through a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the wall behind us the interior of the kitchen we now saw grayly for the first time the window had been burst in by a massive garden mould which flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet outside the soil was banked high against the house at the top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drain pipe the floor was littered with smashed hardware the end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into and since the daylight shone in there it was evident the greater part of the house had collapsed contrasting vividly that this ruin was the neat dresser stained in a fashion pale green and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it the wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range as the dawn grew clearer we saw through the gap in the wall the beauty of a Martian standing sentinel I suppose over the still glowing cylinder at the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind the fifth cylinder I whispered the fifth shot from Mars has struck this house and buried us under the ruins for the first time the curate was silent and then he whispered God have mercy upon us I heard him presently whimpering to himself say for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery I for my part scarce dared breathe and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of the kitchen door I could just see the curate's face a dim oval shape and his collar and cuffs outside there began a metallic hammering then a violent hooting a quiet interval a hissing like the hissing of an engine these noises for the most part problematical continued intermittently and seemed if anything to increase in number as time wore on presently a measured and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift began and continued once the light was eclipsed and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely dark for many hours we must have crouched there silent and shivering until our tired attention failed at last I found myself awake and very hungry I am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening my hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action I told the curate I was going to seek food and felt my way towards the pantry he made me no answer but so soon as I began eating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me end of chapter 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 2 Chapter 2 what we saw from the ruined house after eating we crept back to the scullery and there I must have dozed again for presently when I looked round I was alone the thudding vibration continued with weird some persistence I whispered for the curate several times and at last felt my way to the door of the kitchen it was still daylight and I perceived him across the room lying against the triangle hole that looked out upon the Martians his shoulders were hunched so that his head was hidden from me I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed the place rocked with that beating thud through the aperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky for a minute or so I remained watching the curate and then I advanced crouching and stepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered the floor I touched the curate's leg and he started so violently that a massive plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact I gripped his arm fearing he might cry out and for a long time we crouched motionless then I turned to see how much our rampart remained the detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open in the debris and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet suburban roadway vast indeed was the change that we beheld the fifth cylinder must have fallen right in the midst of the house we had first visited the building had vanished completely smashed pulverized and dispersed by the blow the cylinder lay now far beneath the original foundations deep in a hole already vastly larger than the pit I had looked into at woking the earth all rounded had splashed under that tremendous impact splashed is the only word and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses it had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer and collapsed backward the front portion even on the ground floor had been destroyed completely by a chance the kitchen and scullery had escaped and stood buried now under soil and ruins closed in by tons of earth on every side saved towards the cylinder over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great circular pit the Martians were engaged in making the heavy beating sound was evidently just behind us and ever and again a bright green vapor drove up like a veil across our peephole the cylinder was already open in the centre of the pit and on the farther edge of the pit amid the smashed and gravel heaped shrubbery one of the great fighting machines deserted by its occupant stood stiff and tall against the evening sky at first I scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder although it had been convenient to describe them first on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it the mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first it was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling machines and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention as it dawned upon me first it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed agile legs and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body most of its arms were retracted but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder these as it extracted them were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it its motion was so swift, complex and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine in spite of its metallic glitter the fighting machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch but nothing to compare with this people who have never seen these structures and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or the imperfect descriptions of such eyewitnesses as myself to go upon scarcely realize that living quality I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war the artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting machines and there his knowledge ended he presented them as tilted, stiff tripods without either flexibility or subtlety and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect the pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue and I mentioned them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created they were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being to my mind the pamphlet would have been much better without them at first I say the handling machine did not impress me as a machine but as a crab-like creature with a glittering integument the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion but then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown shiny leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond and the true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me with that realization my interest shifted to those other creatures the real Martians already I had had a transient impression of these and the first nausea no longer obscured my observation moreover I was concealed and motionless and under no urgency of action they were I now saw the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive they were huge round bodies or rather heads about four feet in diameter each body having in front of it a face this face had no nostrils indeed the Martians do not seem to have any sense of smell but it had a pair of very large dark coloured eyes and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak in the back of this head or body I scarcely know how to speak of it was the single tight tympanic surface since known to be anatomically an ear though it must have been almost useless in our dense air in a group round the mouth was 16 a calendar almost whip like tentacles arranged in two bunches of eight each these bunches have since been named rather aptly by that distinguished anatomist Professor Howes the hands even as I saw these Martians for the first time they seem to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands but of course with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions this was impossible there is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility the internal anatomy I may remark here as dissection has since shown was almost equally simple the greater part of the structure was the brain sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear and tactile tentacles besides this were the bulky lungs into which the mouth opened and the heart and its vessels the pulmonary distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only to evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin and this was the sum of the Martian organs strange as it may seem to a human being all the complex apparatus of digestion which makes up the bulk of our bodies did not exist in the Martians they were heads merely heads entrails they had none they did not eat much less digest instead they took the fresh living blood of other creatures and injected it into their own veins I have seen this being done as I shall mention in its place but squeamish as I may seem I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching let it suffice to say blood obtained from a still living animal in most cases from a human being was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal the bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us but at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive omnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit the physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process our bodies are half made up of glands and tubes and organs occupied in turning heterogeneous food into blood the digestive processes and their reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our minds men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers or sound gastric glands but the Martians were lifted above all these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars these creatures to judge from the shriveled remains that have fallen into human hands were bipeds with flimsy silica skeletons almost like those of the silica sponges and feeble musculature standing about six feet high and having round erect heads and large eyes in flinty sockets two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder and all were killed before earth was reached it was just as well for them for the mere attempt to stand upright on our body would have broken every bone in their bodies and while I am engaged in this description I may add in this place certain further details which although they were not all evident to us at the time will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures in three other points their physiology differed strangely from ours their organisms did not sleep any more than the heart of a man sleeps since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate that periodical extinction was unknown to them they had little or no sense of fatigue it would seem on earth they could never have moved without effort yet even to the last they kept in action in 24 hours they did 24 hours of work as even on earth is perhaps the case with the ants in the next place wonderful as it seems in a sexual world the Martians were absolutely without sex and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men a young Martian there can now be no dispute was really born upon earth during the war and it was found attached to its parent partially budded off just as young lily bulbs bud off or like the young animals in the freshwater polyp in man in all the higher terrestrial animals such a method of increase has disappeared but even on this earth it was certainly the primitive method among the lower animals up even to those first cousins of the vertebrated animals the tunicates the two processes occur side by side but finally the sexual methods superseded its competitor altogether on Mars however just the reverse has apparently been the case it is worthy to remark that a certain speculative writer of quasi scientific repute writing long before the Martian invasion did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian condition his prophecy I remember appeared in November or December 1893 in a long defunct publication the pal male budget and I recall a caricature of it in a pre Martian periodical called punch he pointed out writing in a foolish facetious tone that the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs the perfection of chemical devices digestion that such organs as hair external nose teeth is and chin were no longer essential parts of the human body and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages the brain alone remained a cardinal necessity only one other part of the body had a strong case for survival and that was the hand teacher and agent of the brain while the rest of the body dwindled the hands would grow larger there is many a true word written in jest and here in the Martians we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence to me it is quite credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike ourselves by a graduate development of brain and hands the latter giving rise to two punches of delicate tentacles at last at the expense of the rest of the body without the body the brain would of course become a mere selfish intelligence without any of the emotional substratum of the human being the last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial particular microorganisms which cause so much disease and pain on earth have either never appeared on Mars or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago a hundred diseases all the fevers and contagions of human life consumption, cancers, tumors and such morbidities never enter the scheme of their life and speaking of the difference between the life on Mars and terrestrial life I may allude here to the curious suggestion of the red weed apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars instead of having green as a dominant color is of a vivid blood red tint at any rate the seeds that the Martians intentionally or accidentally brought with them gave rise in all cases to red colored growths only that known popularly as the red weed however gained any footing in competition with terrestrial forms the red creeper was quite a transitory growth and a few people have seen it growing for a time however the red weed grew with astonishing vigor and luxurience it spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment and its cactus like branches formed a carmine fridge to the edges of our triangular window and afterwards I found it broadcast throughout the country and especially wherever there was a stream of water the Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ a single round drum at the back of the head body and eyes with a visual range not very different from ours except that according to Philips blue and violet were as black to them it is commonly supposed that they communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations this is asserted for instance in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet written evidently by someone not an eyewitness of Martian actions to which I have already alluded and which so far has been the chief source of information concerning them now no surviving human being saw so much of the Martians in action as I did I take no credit to myself for an accident but the fact is so and I assert that I watch them closely time after time and that I have seen four five and at once six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without either sound or gesture their peculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding it has no modulation and was I believe in no sense a signal but merely the expiration of air preparatory to the suction operation I have a certain claim to at least an elementary knowledge of psychology and in this matter I am convinced as firmly as I am convinced of anything that the Martians interchange thoughts without any physical intermediation and I have been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions before the Martian invasion as an occasional reader here and there may remember I had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory the Martians wore no clothing their conceptions of ornament and not only were they evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are but changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at all seriously yet though they wore no clothing it was in the other artificial additions to their body resources that their great superiority over man lay we men with our bicycles and road skates our Lillian-thal soaring machines our guns and sticks and so forth are just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out they have become practically mere brains wearing different bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet and of all their appliances perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism is absent the wheel is absent among all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels they would have least expected it in locomotion and in this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth nature has never hit upon the wheel or has preferred other expedience to its development and not only did the Martians either not know of which is incredible or abstain from the wheel but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot with circular motions thereabout almost all of the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings and while upon this matter of detail it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the discs in an elastic sheath these discs become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when transversed by a current of electricity in this way the curious parallelism to animal motions which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder was attained such quasi-massiles abounded in the crab-like handling machine which on my first peeping out of the slit I watched unpacking the cylinder it seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light panting, stirring in effectual tentacles and moving feebly after their vast journey across space while I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight and noting each strange detail of their form the cure reminded me of his presence by pulling violently at my arm I turned to a scowling face and silent, eloquent lips he wanted the slit which permitted only one of us to peep through and so I had to forego watching them for a time while he enjoyed that privilege when I looked again the busy handling machine had already put together several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder the shape having an unmistakable lightness to its own and down on the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view emitting jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit excavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner this it was which had caused the regular beating noise and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering it piped and whistled as it worked so far as I could see without a directing Martian at all End of Chapter 2 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 2 Chapter 3 The Days of Imprisonment The arrival of a second fighting machine drove us from our peephole into the scullery for we feared that from his elevation the Martian might see down upon us behind our barrier At a later date we began to feel less in danger of their eyes for to an eye in the dazzle of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness but at first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery in heart-throbbing retreat yet terrible as the danger we incurred the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible and I recall now with a sort of wonder that in spite of the infinite danger in which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death we could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight we would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and the dread of making a noise and strike each other and thrust and kick within a few inches of exposure The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits of thought and action and our danger and isolation only accentuated the incompatibility At Halliford I had already come to hate the curate's trick of helpless exclamation his stupid rigidity of mind his endless muttering monologue viscated every effort I made to think out a line of action and drove me at times thus pent up and intensified almost to the verge of craziness he was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman he would weep for hours together and I verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious and I would sit in the darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities he ate more than I did and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the Martians had done with their pit that in the long patience a time might presently come when we should need food he ate and drank impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals he ate little as the days wore on his utter carelessness of any consideration so intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I looth doing it to resort to threats and at last to blows that brought him to reason for a time but he was one of those weak creatures void of pride, timorous, anemic, hateful souls full of shifty cunning who face neither God nor man who face not even themselves it is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things but I set them down that my story may lack nothing those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality my flash of rage in our final tragedy easy enough to blame for they know what is wrong as well as any but not what is possible to tortured men but those who have been under the shadow who have gone down at last to elemental things will have a wider charity and while within we fought out a dark, dim contest of whispers snatched food and drink and gripping hands and blows without in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible dune was the strange wonder the unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit let me return to those first new experiences of mine after a long time I ventured back to the peephole to find that the newcomers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting machines these last have brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood the banner about the cylinder the second handling machine was now completed and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the big machine had brought this was a body resembling a milk can in its general form above which oscillated a pear shaped receptacle and from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below the oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling machine with two spatula hands the machine was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear shaped receptacle above while with another arm it periodically opened door and removed rusty and blackened clinker from the middle part of the machine another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the mound of bluish dust from this unseen receiver a little thread of green spoke rose vertically into the quiet air as I looked the handling machine with a faint and musical clinking extended telescopic fashion a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere blunt projection until its eddent was hidden behind the mound of clay in another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight untarnished as yet and shining dazzlingly and deposited it in a growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit between sunset and starlight this dextrous machine must have made more than a hundred such bars out of the crude clay and the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped the sight of the pit the contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was acute and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two things the curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought to the pit I was sitting below huddled up listening with all my ears he made a sudden movement backwards and I, fearful that we were observed, crouched in a spasm of terror he came sliding down the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness inarticulate gesticulating and for a moment I shared his panic his gesture suggested a resignation of the slit and after a little while my curiosity gave me courage and I rose up, stepped across him and clambered up to it at first I could see no reason for his frantic behaviour that had come, the stars were little and faint but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from the aluminium making the whole picture was a flickering scheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows strangely trying to the eyes over and through it all went the bats heeding it not at all the sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen the mound of blue green powder had risen to cover them from sight and a fighting machine with its legs contracted pulled and abbreviated stood across the corner of the pit and then amid the clanger of the machinery came a drifting suspicion of human voices that I entertained at first only to dismiss I crouched watching this fighting machine closely satisfying myself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian as the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument and the brightness of his eyes and suddenly I heard a yell and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back then something something struggling violently was lifted high against the sky a black vague enigma against the starlight and as this black object came down again I saw by the green brightness that it was a man for an instant he was clearly visible he was a stout ruddy middle-aged man well-dressed three days before he must have been walking the world a man of considerable consequence I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light in his stunts and watch-chain he vanished behind the mound and for a moment there was silence and then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet clapped my hands over my ears and bolted into the scullery the curate who had been crouching silently with his arms over his head looked up as I passed sadly at my desertion of him and came running after me that night as we lurked in the scullery balanced between our horror and the terrible fascination this peeping had although I felt an urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape but afterwards during the second day I was able to consider our position with great clearness the curate I found was quite incapable of discussion this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all vestiges of reason or forethought practically he had already sunk to the level of an animal but as the saying goes I gripped myself with both hands it grew upon my mind once I could face the facts that terrible as our position was there was as yet no justification for absolute despair our chief chance lay in the possibility of the Martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment or even if they kept it permanently they might not consider it necessary to guard it and a chance of escape might be afforded us I also weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging away out in a direction away from the pit but the chances of our emerging within sight of some sentinel fighting machine seemed at first too great and I should have had to do all the digging myself the curate would certainly have failed me it was on the third day if my memory serves me right that I saw the lad killed it was the only occasion on which I actually saw the Martians feed after that experience I avoided the hole in the wall for the better part of a day I went into the scullery removed the door and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth collapsed noisily and I did not dare continue I lost heart and lay down on the scullery floor for a long time having no spirit even to move and after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping from excavation it's as much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about by their overthrow through any human effort but on the fourth or fifth night I heard a sound like heavy guns it was very late in the night and the moon was shining brightly the Martians had taken away the excavating machine and saved for a fighting machine that stood in the remota bank of the pit and a handling machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the pit immediately beneath my peephole the place was deserted by them except for the pale glow from the handling machine and the bars and patches of white moonlight the pit was in darkness and except for the clinking of the handling machine quite still that night was a beautiful serenity say for one planet the moon seemed to have the sky to herself I heard a dog howling and that familiar sound it was that made me listen then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly like the sound of great guns six distinct reports I counted and after a long interval six again and that was all end of chapter three this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 2 Chapter 4 The Death of the Curate it was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the last time and presently found myself alone instead of keeping close to me and trying to oust me from the slit the curate had gone back into the scullery I was struck by a sudden thought I went back quickly and quietly into the scullery in the darkness I heard the curate drinking I snatched in the darkness and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy for a few minutes there was a tussle the bottle struck the floor and broke and I desisted and rose we stood panting and threatening each other in the end I planted myself between him and the food and told him of my determination to begin a discipline I divided the food in the pantry into rations to last us ten days I would not let him eat any more than that in the afternoon he made a feeble effort to get at the food I had been dozing but in an instant I was awake all day and all night we sat face to face I weary but resolute and the weeping and complaining of his immediate hunger it was I know a night and a day but to me it seemed, it seems now an interminable length of time and so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict for two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests there were times when I beat and kicked him madly times when I cajoled and persuaded him and once I tried to bribe him with a little last bottle of burgundy for there was a rainwater pump from which I could get water but neither force nor kindness availed he was indeed beyond reason he would neither desist from his attacks on the food nor from his noisy babbling to himself the rudimentary precautions to keep our imprisonment indurable he wouldn't observe slowly I began to realise the complete overthrow of his intelligence to perceive that my sole companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane from certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind wandered at times I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept it sounds paradoxical but I am inclined to think that the weakness and insanity of the curate warned me, braced me and kept me a sane man on the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering and nothing I could do would moderate his speech it is just, oh God, he would say, over and over again it is just, on me and mine be the punishment laid we have sinned, we have fallen short there was poverty, sorrow, the poor were trodden into the dust and I held my peace I preached acceptable folly, my Lord, what folly when I should have stood up, though I died for it and called upon them to repent, repent oppressors of the poor and needy, the wine press of God then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I was held from him, praying, begging, weeping at last threatening he began to raise his voice I prayed him not to he perceived a hold on me he threatened he would shout and bring the Martians upon us for a time that scared me but any concession would have shortened our chance of escape beyond estimating I defied him, although I felt no assurance that he might not do this thing but that day at any rate he did not he talked with his voice rising slowly through the greater part of the eighth and ninth days threats, entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham of God's service such as made me pity him then he slept a while and began again with renewed strength so loudly that I must needs make him desist be still, I implored he rose to his knees for he had been sitting in the darkness near the copper I have been still too long, he said, in a tone that must have reached the pit and now I must bear witness, woe unto this unfaithful city woe, woe, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of other voices of the trumpet shut up, I said, rising to my feet and in a terror lest the Martians should hear us for God's sake, nay, shouted the curate at the top of his voice standing likewise and extending his arms speak, the word of the Lord is upon me in three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen I must bear witness, I go, it has already been too long delayed I put out my hand and felt the meat-chopper hanging to the wall in a flash I was after him, I was fierce with fear before he was halfway across the kitchen I had overtaken him with one last touch of humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt he went headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground I stumbled over him and stood panting, he lay still suddenly I heard a noise without the run and smash of slipping plaster and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened I looked up and saw the lower surface of a handling machine coming slowly across the hole one of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams I stood petrified, staring then I saw through a sort of glass plate near the edge of the body the face, as we may call it and the large dark eyes of a Martian, peering and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate and stopped at the scullery door the tentacle was now some way, two yards or more in the room and twisting and turning with queer sudden movements this way and that for a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful advance then, with a faint horse cry I forced myself across the scullery I trembled violently I could scarcely stand upright I opened the door of the coal cellar and stood there in the darkness, staring at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen and listening had the Martian seen me? What was it doing now? something was moving to and fro there very quietly every now and then it tapped against the wall or started on its movements with a faint metallic ringing like the movements of a keys on a split ring then a heavy body, I knew too well what was dragged across the floor of the kitchen towards the opening irresistibly attracted I crept to the door and peeped into the kitchen by angle of bright outer sunlight I saw the Martian in its bryarius of the handling machine scrutinizing the cure its head I thought at once that it would infirm my presence from the mark of the blow it had given him I crept back to the coal cellar shut the door and began to cover myself up as much as I could and as noiselessly as possible in the darkness among the firewood and coal therein every now and then I paused, rigid to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacle through the opening again then the faint metallic jingle returned I traced it slowly feeling over the kitchen presently I heard it nearer in the scullery as I judged I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me I prayed copiously it passed scraping faintly across the cellar door an age of almost intolerable suspense intervened then I heard it fumbling at the latch it had found the door the Martians understood doors it worried at the catch for a minute perhaps and then the door opened in the darkness I could just see the thing like an elephant's trunk more than anything else waving towards me and touching and examining the wall coals, wood and ceiling it was like a black worm swaying its blind head to and fro once even it touched the heel of my boot I was on the verge of screaming I bit my hand at a time the tentacle was silent I could have fancied it had been withdrawn presently with an abrupt click it gripped something I thought it had me and seemed to go out of the cellar again for a minute I was not sure apparently it had taken a lump of coal to examine I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position which had become cramped and then listened I whispered passionate prayers for safety then I heard the slow, deliberate sound towards me again slowly slowly it drew near scratching against the walls and tapping the furniture while I was still doubtful it rapped smartly against the cellar door and closed it I heard it go into the pantry and the biscuit tins rattled and a bottle smashed and then came a heavy bump against the cellar door then silence that passed into an infinity of suspense had it gone at last I decided that it had it came into the scullery no more but I lay there all the tenth day in the close darkness buried among coals and firewood not daring even to crawl out for the drink for which I craved it was the eleventh day before I ventured so far from my security End of chapter 4 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 2 Chapter 5 The Stillness My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door between the kitchen and the scullery but the pantry was empty every scrap of food had gone apparently the Martian had taken it all on the previous day at that discovery I despaired for the first time I took no food or no drink either on the eleventh or the twelfth day at first my mouth and throat were parched and my strength ebbed sensibly I sat about in the darkness of the scullery in a state of despondent wretchedness my mind ran on eating I thought I had become deaf for the noises of movement I had been so accustomed to hear from the pit had ceased absolutely I did not feel strong enough to crawl noiselessly to the peephole or I would have gone there on the twelfth day my throat was so painful that taking the chance of alarming the Martians I attacked the creaking rainwater pump that stood by the sink and got a couple of glass falls of blackened and tainted rainwater I was greatly refreshed by this and emboldened by the fact that no inquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping during these days in a rambling inconclusive way I thought much of the curate and of the manner of his death on the thirteenth day I drank some more water and dozed and thought disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms of the death of the curate or of sumptuous dinners but a sleeper awake I felt a keen pain that urged me to drink again and again the light that came into the scullery was no longer grey but red to my disordered imagination it seemed the colour of blood on the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen and I was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in the wall turning the half light of the place into a crimson coloured obscurity it was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious familiar sequence of sounds in the kitchen and listening identified it as the snuffing and scratching of a dog going into the kitchen I saw a dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds this greatly surprised me at the scent of me he barked shortly I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I should be able perhaps to kill and eat him and in any case it would be advisable to kill him lest his actions attracted the attention of the Martians I crept forward saying good dog very softly but he suddenly withdrew his head and disappeared I listened I was not deaf but certainly the pit was still I heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wing and a horse croaking but that was all for a long while I lay close to the peephole but not daring to move aside the red plants that obscured it once or twice I heard a faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the sand far below me and there were more bird-like sounds but that was all at length encouraged by the silence I looked out except in the corner where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed there was not a living thing in the pit I stared about me scarcely believing my eyes all the machinery had gone save for the big mound of grayish-blue powder in one corner certain bars of aluminium in another the black birds and the skeletons of the killed the place was merely an empty circular pit in the sand slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed and stood upon the mound of rubble I could see in any direction save behind me to the north and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen the pit dropped sheerly from my feet but a little way along the rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins my chance of escape had come I began to tremble I hesitated for some time and then in a gust of desperate resolution and with a heart that throbbed violently I scrambled to the top of the mound in which I had been buried so long I looked about again to the northward too no Martian was visible when I had last seen this part of sheen in the daylight it had been a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses interspersed with abundant shady trees now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork clay and gravel over which spread a multitude of red cactus shaped plants knee high without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute their footing the trees near me were dead and brown but further a network of red thread scaled the still living stems the neighbouring houses had all been wrecked but none had been burned their walls stood sometimes to the second story with smashed windows and shattered doors the red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless rooms below me was the great pit with the crows struggling for its refuse a number of other birds hopped about among the ruins far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall but traces of men there were none the day seemed by contrast with my recent confinement dazzlingly bright the sky a glowing blue a gentle breeze kept the red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying and oh the sweetness of the air End of chapter 5 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by HG Wells Book 2 Chapter 6 The Work of 15 Days For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety within that noisome dem from which I had emerged I had thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security I had not realised what had been happening to the world had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things I had expected to see sheen in ruins I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid of another planet For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navies digging the foundations of a house I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind that oppressed me for many days a sense of dethronement a persuasion that I was no longer a master but an animal among the animals under the Martian heel with us it would be as with them to lurk and watch, to run and hide the fear and empire of man had passed away but so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed and my dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast in the direction away from the pit I saw beyond a red covered wall a patch of garden ground unburied this gave me a hint and I went knee deep and sometimes neck deep in the red weed the density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding the wall was some six feet high and when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my feet to the crest so I went along by the side of it and came to a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top and tumble into the garden I coveted here I found some young onions a couple of gladiolus bulbs and a quantity of immature carrots all of which I secured and scrambling over the ruined wall went on my way through the scarlet and crimson trees towards Q it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood drops possessed with two ideas to get more food and to limp as soon and as far as my strength permitted out of this accursed unearthly region of the pit someway farther in a grassy place was a group of mushrooms which also I devoured and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow water where meadows used to be these fragments of nourishment served only to wet my hunger at first I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the tropical exuberance of the red weed directly this extraordinary growth encountered water its straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled fecundity its seeds were simply poured down into the water and it swiftly growing and titanic waterfronts speedily choked both those rivers at Putney, as I afterwards saw the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed and at Richmond too the Thames water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham as the water spread the weed followed them until the ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp whose margins I explored and much of the desolation the Martians had caused was concealed in the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread a cankering disease due, it is believed to the action of certain bacteria presently seized upon it now by the action of natural selection all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseases they never succumbed without a severe struggle but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead the fons became bleached and then shriveled and brittle they break off at the least touch and the waters that had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out to sea my first act on coming to this water was of course to slake my thirst I drank a great deal of it and moved by an impulse nored some fronds of red weed but they were watery and had a sickly metallic taste I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to wade securely although the red weed impeded my feet a little but the flood evidently got deeper towards the river and I turned back to Mort Lake I managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps and so presently I got out of this spate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came out on Putney Common here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly undisturbed spaces houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed as if they had been left for a day by the owners or as if their inhabitants slept within the red weed was less abundant the tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper I hunted for food among the trees finding nothing and I also raided a couple of silent houses but they had already been broken into and ransacked I rested the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery being in my enfeebled condition and I was too fatigued to push on all this time I saw no human beings and no signs of the Martians I encountered a couple of hungry looking dogs but both hurried circuitously away from the advances I made them near Roehampton I had seen two human skeletons not bodies but skeletons picked clean and in the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep but though I gnawed parts of these in my mouth there was nothing to be got from them after sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney where I think the heat ray must have been used for some reason and in the garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes sufficient to stay my hunger from this garden one looked down upon Putney and the river the aspect of the place in the dusk was singularly desolate blackened trees, blackened desolate ruins and down the hill the sheets of the flooded river red tinge with the weed and over all silence it filled me with an indescribable terror to think how swiftly that desolating change had come for a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence and that I stood there alone the last man left alive hard by the top of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body as I proceeded I became more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was save for such stragglers as myself already accomplished in this part of the world the Martians I thought had gone on and left the country desolated seeking food elsewhere perhaps even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris or it might be they had gone Northwood End of chapter 6 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 2 Chapter 7 The Man on Putney Hill I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to Leatherhead I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into that house afterwards I found the front door was on the latch nor how I ransacked every room for food until just on the verge of despair in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom I found a rat-nord crust and two tins of pineapple the place had already been searched and emptied in the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked the latter I could not eat they were too rotten but the former not only stayed by hunger but filled my pockets fearing some Martians might come beating that part of London for food in the night before I went to bed I had an interval of restlessness and proud from window to window peering out for some sign of these monsters I slept little as I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively a thing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate during all the intervening time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional states of stupid receptivity but in the night my brain reinforced I suppose by food I had eaten grew clear again and I thought three things struggled for possession of my mind the killing of the curate the whereabouts of the Martians and the possible fate of my wife the former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall I saw it simply as a thing done a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse I saw myself then as I see myself now driven step by step towards that hasty low the creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that I felt no condemnation yet the memory static unprogressive haunted me in the silence of the night with that sense of the nearness of God that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness I stood my trial, my only trial for that moment of wrath and fear I retraced every step of our conversation from the moment when I had found him crouching beside me heedless of my thirst and pointing to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Waybridge we had been incapable of cooperation grim chance had taken no heed of that had I foreseen I should have left him at Halliford but I did not foresee and crime is to foresee and do and I set this down as I have set all this story down as it was there were no witnesses all these things I might have concealed but I set it down and the reader must form his judgment as he will and when by an effort I had set aside that picture of a prostrate body I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife for the former I had no data I could imagine a hundred things and so unhappily I could for the latter and suddenly that night became terrible I found myself sitting up in bed staring at the dark I found myself praying that the heat rain might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers had prayed as heathens muttered charms when I was in extremity but now I prayed indeed pleading steadfastly and sanely face to face with the darkness of God strange night strangest in this that so soon as Daughter had come I, who had talked with God crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place a creature scarcely larger an inferior animal a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed perhaps they also prayed confidently to God surely if we have learned nothing else this war has taught us pity pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion the morning was bright and fine and the eastern sky glowed pink and was fretted with little golden clouds in the road that runs from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the panic torrent that must have poured Londonwood on the Sunday night after the fighting began there was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer New Molden with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk there was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud and at the top of West Hill a lot of bloodstained glass about the overturned water trough my movements were languid my plans of the vaguest I had an idea of going to Leatherhead though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of finding my wife certainly unless death had overtaken them suddenly my cousins and she would have fled thence but it seemed to me I might find or learn there whether the Surrey people had fled I knew I wanted to find my wife that my heart ached for her and the world of men but I had no clear idea how the finding might be done I was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness from the corner I went under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes to the edge of Wimbledon Common stretching wide and far that dark expanse was lit in patches by Yellow Gorse and Broom there was no red weed to be seen and as I proud, hesitatingly the verge of the open the sun rose flooding it all with light and vitality I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees I stopped to look at them drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live and presently turning suddenly with an odd feeling of being watched I beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes I stood regarding this I made a step towards it and it rose up and became a man helpless I approached him slowly he stood silent and motionless regarding me as I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and filthy as my own he looked indeed as though he had been dragged through a culvert nearer I distinguished the green slime of ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny coley patches his black hair fell over his eyes and his face was dark and pale and pale there was a red cut across the lower part of his face stop he cried when I was within ten yards of him and I stopped his voice was hoarse where do you come from he said I thought surveying him I come from mort lake I was buried near the pit the Martians made about their cylinder I have worked my way out and escaped food about here he said this is my country all this hill down to the river and back to Clapham and up to the edge of the common there is only food for one which way are you going I answered slowly I don't know I said I have been buried in the ruins of a house 13 or 14 days I don't know what has happened he looked at me doubtfully then started and looked with a changed expression I no wish to stop about here said I I think I shall go to Leatherhead for my wife was there he shot out a pointing finger it is you said he the man from Woking and he weren't killed at waybridge I recognized him at the same moment you are the artillery man who came into my garden good luck he said we are lucky ones fancy you he put out a hand and I took it I crawled up a drain he said but they didn't kill everyone and after they went away I got off towards Walton across the fields it's not 16 days altogether and your hair is grey he looked over his shoulder suddenly only a rock he said one gets to know that birds have shadows these days this is a bit open let us crawl under those bushes and talk have you seen any Martians I said since I crawled out they've gone away cross London he said I guess they've got a bigger camp there overnight all over there hamstered way the sky is alive with their lights it's like a great city and in the glare you can just see them moving by daylight you can't but nearer I haven't seen them he counted on his fingers five days then I saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big and the night before last he stopped and spoke impressively it was just a matter of lights but it was something up in the air I believe they've built a flying machine and are learning to fly I stopped on hands and knees where we had come to the bushes fly yes he said fly I went on into the little bower and sat down it is all over with humanity I said if they can do that they will simply go round the world he nodded they will but it will relieve things over here a bit and besides he looked at me aren't you satisfied it is up with humanity I am we're down we're beat I stared strange as it may seem I had not arrived at this fact a fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke I had still held a vague hope rather I had kept a lifelong habit of mind he repeated his words we're beat they carried absolute conviction it's all over he said they've lost one just one and they've made their foot in good and crippled the greatest pair in the world they've walked over us the death of that one at waybridge was an accident and these are only pioneers they kept on coming these green stars they've been none these five or six days but I've no doubt they're falling somewhere every night nothing to be done we're under we're beat I made him no answer I set staring before me trying in vain to devise some countervailing thought this isn't a war said the artillery man it never was a war any more than there's war between man and ants suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory after the tenth shot they fired no more at least until the first cylinder came you know said the artillery man I explained he thought something wrong with the gun he said but what if there is they'll get it right again and even if there's a delay how can it hold to the end it's just men and ants there's the ants build their cities live their lives have wars revolutions until the men want them out of the way and then they go out of the way that's what we are now just ants only yes I said we're eatable ants we sat looking at each other and what will they do with us I said that's what I've been thinking he said that's what I've been thinking after waybridge I went south thinking I saw what was up most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves but I'm not so fond of squealing I've been in sight of death once or twice I'm not an ornamental soldier and at the best and worst death is just death and it's the man that keeps on thinking he comes through I saw everyone tracking away south says I food won't last this way and I turn right back I went for the Martians like a sparrow goes for man all round he waved a hand to the horizon they're starving in heaps bolting, treading on each other he saw my face and halted awkwardly no doubt lots who had money have gone away to France he seemed to hesitate whether to apologise met my eyes and went on all about here can things in shops wines, spirits, mineral waters and the water mains and drains are empty well I was telling you what I was thinking he is intelligent things I said and it seems they want us for food first they'll smash us up ships, machines, guns, cities all the order and organisation all that will go if we were the size of ants we might pull through but we're not it's all too bulky to stop that's the first certainty I assented it is, I've thought it out very well then, next at present we're caught as we're wanted a Martian has only to go a few miles to get a crowd on the run and I saw one one day out by Wandsworth picking houses to pieces and routing among the rackage but they won't keep on doing that so soon as they've settled all our guns and ships and smashed our railways and done all the things they are doing over there they will begin catching us systematic picking the best and storing us in cages and things that's what they will start doing in a bit Lord, they haven't begun on us yet don't you see that not begun, I exclaimed not begun all that's happened so far is through our not having the sense to keep quiet worrying them with guns and such foolery and losing our heads and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any more safety than where we were they don't want to bother us yet they're making their things making all the things they couldn't bring with them getting things ready for the rest of their people very likely that's why the cylinders have stopped for a bit for fear of hitting those who are here and instead of us rushing around blind on the hell or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up we've got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs that's how I figure it out it isn't quite according to what a man wants for his species but it's about what the facts point to and that's the principle I acted upon cities, nations, civilization progress, it's all over that game's up we're beat but if that's so, what is there to live for? the artillery man looked at me for a moment there won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so there won't be any Royal Academy Arts and no nice little feeds at restaurants if it's amusement you're after I reckon the game is up if you've got any adoring room manners or a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping h's you better chuck them away, there ain't no further use you mean, I mean that men like me are going on living for the sake of the breed I tell you, I'm grim set on living and if I'm not mistaken you'll show what insides you've got too before long we aren't going to be exterminated and I don't mean to be caught either untamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox fancy those brown creepers you don't mean to say, I do I'm going on under their feet I've got it planned, I've thought it out we men are best we don't know enough we've got to learn before we've got a chance and we've got to live and keep independent while we learn see, that's what has to be done I stared astonished and stirred profoundly by the man's resolution great God, cried I but you are a man indeed and suddenly I gripped his hand eh? said he with his eyes shining I thought it out, eh? go on, I said well, those who mean to escape their catch mind you, it isn't all of us that are made for wild beasts and that's what it's got to be that's why I watched you I have my doubts, you're slender I didn't know that it was you you see and just how you'd been buried all these, the sort of people that lived in these houses and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way there'd be no good they haven't any spirit in them, no proud dreams and no proud lusts and a man who hasn't won all the other Lord, what is he but funk and precautions I've seen hundreds of them bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season ticket train for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets and sleeping with the wives they married not because they wanted them but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents and on Sundays, fear of the year after as if hell was built for rabbits well, the Martians will just be a godsend to these nice roomy cages fattening food, careful breeding no worry after a week or so chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs they'll come and be caught cheerful they'll be quite glad after a bit they'll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them and the bar loafers and mashers and singers I can imagine them I can imagine them, he said with a sort of somber gratification there'll be any amount of sentiment and religion loose among them there's hundreds of things I saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these last few days there's lots will take things as they are fat and stupid and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong and that they ought to be doing something now, whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something the weak and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking always make a sort of do nothing religion very pious and superior and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord very likely you've seen the same things it's energy in the gale of funk and turn clean inside out these cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety and those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of what is it? eroticism he paused very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them train them to do tricks, you know get sent in middle over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed maybe they will train to hunt us no, I cried that's impossible, no human being what's the good of going on with such lies said the artillery man there's men who do it cheerful what nonsense pretend there isn't and I succumbed to his conviction if they come after me he said, Lord, if they come after me and subsided into grim meditation I sat contemplating these things I couldn't find nothing to bring against this man's reasoning in the days before the invasion no one would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his I, a professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes and he, a common soldier and yet he had already formulated a situation that I had scarcely realised what are you doing? I said presently what plans have you made? he hesitated well, it's like this he said, what have we to do we have to invent a sort of life where men can live and breed are sufficiently secure to bring the children up yes, wait a bit and I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done the tame ones will go like all tame beasts in a few generations they'll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded stupid, rubbish the risk is that we who keep wild will go savage degenerate into a sort of big savage rap you see, how I mean to live is underground I've been thinking about the drains of course, those who don't know drains think horrible things under this London are miles and miles, hundreds of miles and a few days rain and London empty will leave them sweet and clean the main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone then there's cellars, bolts, stores from which bolting passages may be made to the drains and the railway tunnels and subways eh, you begin to see and we form a band, able-bodied, clean-minded men we're not going to pick up any rubbish at Driftsin weaklings go out again as you meant me to go well, odd-parly didn't I? we won't quarrel about that, go on those who stop obey orders able-bodied, clean-minded women we want also, mothers and teachers no laxadaisical ladies, no blasted, roly-nies we can't have any weak or silly life is real again and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die, they ought to die they ought to be willing to die it's a sort of disloyalty after all to live and taint the race and they can't be happy so a dying's none too dreadful it's the funkin makes it bad and in all those places we shall gather our district will be London and we may even be able to keep a watch and run about in the open when the Martians keep away play cricket perhaps that's how we shall save the race, eh? it's a possible thing but saving the race is nothing in itself as I say, that's only being rats it's saving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing there men like you come in there's books, there's models there take great safe places down deep and get all the books we can not novels and poetry swipes but ideas science books, that's where men like you come in we must go to the British Museum and pick all those books through especially we must keep up our science, learn more we must watch these Martians some of us must go with spies when it's all working perhaps I will get caught I mean, and the great thing is we must leave the Martians alone we mustn't even steal, if we get in their way we clear out, we must show them we mean no harm, yes I know but they're intelligent things and they won't hunt us down if they have all they want and think we're just harmless vermin the artillerymen paused and laid a brown hand on my arm after all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before just imagine this, four or five of their fighting machines suddenly starting off heat rays right and left and not a Martian in them not a Martian in them but men, men who have learned the way how it may be in my time even those men, fancy having one of them lovely things with it's heat ray wide and free, fancy having it in control what would it matter if you smashed it's a smithereens at the end of the run after a bust like that I reckon the Martians are open up their beautiful eyes can't you see them man can't you see them, arian arian puffing and blowing a newton to their other mechanical affairs, something out of gear in every case, and swish, bang rattle, swish, just as they are fumbling over it swish comes the heat ray and behold, man has come back to his own for a while the imaginative daring of the artillery man and the tone of assurance and courage he assumed completely dominated my mind I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme and the reader who thinks misoceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily with all his thought about his subject and mine, crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening distracted by apprehension we talked in this manner through the early morning time and later crept out of the bushes and after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair it was the coal cellar of the place and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon, it was a barrow scarcely ten yards long which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney Hill, I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his powers such a hole I could have dug in a day, but I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at his digging we had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range, we refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry, I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labour as we worked I turned his project over in my mind and presently objections and doubts began to arise but I worked there all morning so glad was I to find myself with a purpose again, after working an hour I began to speculate on the distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached the chances we had of missing it all together, my immediate trouble was why we should dig this long tunnel when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of the manholes and work back to the house, it seemed to me too that the house was inconveniently chosen and required a needless length of tunnel and just as I was beginning to face these things the artillery man stopped digging and looked at me, we're working well he said, he put down his spade let us knock off a bit he said I think it's time we reconnoited from the roof of the house, I was for going on and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade and then suddenly I was struck by a thought, I stopped and so did he at once why were you walking about on the common side instead of being here taking the air he said I was coming back, it's safer by night but the work oh one could always work he said and in a flash I saw the man plain he hesitated holding his spade, we ought to reconnoitour now he said because if any come near they may hear the spades and drop upon us and the wares I was no longer disposed to object we went together to the roof and stood on the ladder peeping out of the roof door no martians were to be seen and we ventured out upon the tiles and slipped down under the shelter of the parapet from this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney but we could see the river below a bubbly mass of red weed and the low parts of Lambeth flooded and red the red creepers warmed up the trees about the old palace and their branches stretched gaunt and dead and set with shrivel leaves from amid its clusters it was strange how entirely dependent things were upon flowing water for their propagation above us neither had gained a footing lebernums, pink maize, snowballs and trees of alba vitae rose out of the laurels and hydrangeas green and brilliant in the sunlight beyond Kensington dense smoke was rising and that and a blue haze hid the northward hills the artillery man began to tell me of the sort of people who still remained in London one light last week he said he got the electric lights in order and there was all Regent Street and the Circus of Blaze crowded with painted and ragged drunkards men and women dancing and shouting till dawn a man who was there told me and as the day came they became aware of a fighting machine standing near by the Langham and looking down at them ever knows how long he had been there it must have given some of them a nasty turn he came down the road to autumn and picked up nearly 100 two-drunkle frighten to run away grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe from that in answer to my questions he came round to his grandiose plans again he grew enthusiastic he talked so eloquently of the possibility of catching a fighting machine that I more than half believed in him again but now that I was beginning to understand something of his quality I could divine the stress he laid on doing nothing precipitately and I noted that now there was no question that he personally was to capture and fight the great machine after a time we went down to the cellar neither of us seemed disposed to resume digging and when he suggested a meal I was nothing loath he became suddenly very generous and when we had eaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars we lit these and his optimism glowed he was inclined to regard my coming as a great occasion there is some champagne in the cellar he said we can dig better on this 10 side burgundy said I no said he I am most today champagne great god we've had enough tasks before us let's take a rest and gather strength while we may look at these blistered hands and pursuant to this idea of a holiday he insisted on playing cards after we had eaten he taught me yuka and after dividing London between us I taking the northern side and he the southern we played for parish points grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober reader it is absolutely true and what is more remarkable I found the card game and several others made extremely interesting strange mind of man that with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death we could sit following the chance of this painted pace board and playing the joker with vivid delight afterwards he taught me poker and I beat him at three tough chess games when dark came we decided to take the risk and litter lamp after an interminable string of games we sucked and the artillery man finished the champagne we went on smoking the cigars he was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had encountered in the morning he was still optimistic but it was a less kinetic a more thoughtful optimism I remember he wound up with my health proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence I took a cigar and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken that blaze so greenly along the high gate hills at first I stared unintelligently across the London valley the northern hills were shrouded in darkness the fires near Kensington glowed redly and now and then an orange red tongue of flame flashed up and vanished in the deep blue night all the rest of London was black then nearer I perceived a strange light a pale violet purple fluorescent glow quivering under the night breeze for a space I could not understand it and then I knew that it must be the red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded with that realization my dormant sense of wonder my sense of the proportion of things awoke again I glanced from that to Mars red and clear glowing high in the west and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of hamster and high gate I remained a very long time upon the roof wondering at the grotesque changes of the day I recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card playing I had a violent revulsion of feeling I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism my folly came to me with glaring exaggeration I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind I was filled with remorse I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony and to go on into London there it seemed to me I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my fellow men were doing I was still upon the roof when the late moon rose End of chapter 7 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 2 Chapter 8 Dead London I went down the hill and by the high street across the bridge to Fulham The red weed was tumultuous at that time and nearly choked the bridge roadway but its fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that presently removed it so swiftly At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge Station I found a man lying he was as black as a sweep with the black dust alive but helplessly and speechlessly drunk I could get nothing from him but curses and furious lunges at my head I think I should have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards and it grew thicker in Fulham The streets were horribly quiet I got food, sour, hard and mouldy but quite eatable in a baker's shop here Someway towards Wallam Green the streets became clear of powder and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire The noise of the burning was an absolute relief Going on towards Brompton the streets were quiet again Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies I saw together about a dozen in the length of the Fulham Road They had been dead many days so that I hurried quickly past them The black powder covered them over and softened their outlines One or two had been disturbed by dogs Where there was no black powder it was curiously like a Sunday in the city with the closed shops the houses locked up and the blinds drawn the desertion and the stillness In some places plunderers had been at work but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place but apparently the thief had been disturbed and a number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement I did not trouble to touch them Father on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep The hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress and a smashed magnum of champagne She seemed to sleep but she was dead The father I penetrated into London the profounder grew the stillness but it was not so much the stillness of death it was the stillness of suspense of expectation At any time the destruction that had already signed the north-western borders of the metropolis and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn might strike among these houses and leave them smoking ruins It was a city condemned and derelict In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses It was a sobbing alternation of two notes OOLA OOLA OOLA Keeping on perpetually When I passed streets that ran northwards it grew in volume and houses and buildings seemed to deaden It came in full tide down Exhibition Road I stopped staring towards Kensington Gardens wondering at this strange remote wailing It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude OOLA OOLA OOLA Wailed that superhuman note Great waves of sound sweeping down the broad sunlit roadway between the tall buildings on each side I turned northwards marvelling towards the iron gates of Hyde Park I had half a mind to break into the Natural History Museum and find my way up to the summit of the towers in order to see across the park but I decided to keep on the ground where quick hiding was possible and so went on up the Exhibition Road All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and still and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses At the top near the park gate I came upon a strange sight a bus overturned and the skeleton of a horse picked clean I puzzled over this for a time and then went on to the bridge over the serpentine The voice grew stronger and stronger though I could see nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park save a haze of smoke to the north west OOLA OOLA OOLA cried the voice coming as it seemed to me from the district about Regent's Park The desolating cry worked upon my mind the mood that had sustained me past the wailing took possession of me I found I was intensely weary foot sore and now and again hungry and thirsty It was already past noon Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state and in its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely my mind ran on old friends that I had forgotten for years I thought of the poisons in the chemist shops of the liquors the wine merchants stored I recalled the two sudden creatures of despair who so far as I knew shared the city with myself I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch and here again were black powder and several bodies and an evil ominous smell from the gratings of the cellars of some of the houses I grew very thirsty after the heat of my long walk with infinite trouble I managed to break into a public house and get food and drink I was weary after eating and went into the parlour behind the bar and slept on a black horse hair sofa I found there I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears Oula Oula Oula It was now dusk and after I had routed out some biscuits and a cheese in the bar there was a meat safe but it contained nothing but maggots I wandered on through the silent residential squares of Baker Street Portman Square is the only one I can name and so came out at last upon Regent's Park and as I emerged from the top of Baker Street I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian Giant from which this howling proceeded I was not terrified I came upon him as if it were a matter of course I watched him for some time but it did not move I was standing and yelling for no reason that I could discover I tried to formulate a plan of action that perpetual sound of Oula Oula Oula confused my mind perhaps I was too tired to be very fearful certainly I was more curious to know the reason for this monotonous crying than afraid I turned back away from the park and struck into Park Road intending to skirt the park at the shelter of the terraces and got a view of this stationary howling Martian from the direction of St. John's Wood a couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus and saw first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong towards me and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him he made a wide curve to avoid me as though he feared I might prove a fresh competitor as the yelping died away down the silent road of Oula Oula Oula reasserted itself I came upon the wrecked handling machine halfway to St. John's Wood Station at first I thought a house had fallen across the road it was only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw with a start this mechanical Samson lying with its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted among the ruins it had made the four part was shattered it seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house and had been overwhelmed in its overthrow it seemed to me then that this might have happened by a handling machine escaping from the guidance of its Martian I could not clamber among the ruins to see it and the twilight was now so far advanced the blood with which its seat was smeared and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had left were invisible to me wondering still more at all that I had seen I pushed on towards Primrose Hill far away through a gap in the trees I saw a second Martian as motionless as the first standing in the park towards the zoological gardens and silent a little beyond the ruins about the smashed handling machine I came upon the red weed again and found the regent's canal a spongy mass of dark red vegetation as I crossed the bridge the sound of ceased it was cut off the silence came like a thunder clap the dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim the trees towards the park were growing black all about me the red weed clambered among the ruins writhing to get above me in the dimness night the mother of fear and mystery was coming upon me but while that voice sounded the solitude the desolation had been and durable by virtue of it London had still seemed alive and the sense of life about me had upheld me then suddenly a change the passing of something I knew not what and then a stillness that could be felt nothing but this gaunt quiet London about me gazed at me spectrally the windows of the white houses were like the eye sockets of skulls about me my imagination found a thousand noiseless enemies moving terror seized me a horror of my temerity in front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was tarred and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway I could not bring myself to go on I turned down St John's Wood Road and ran headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn I hid from the night and the silence until long after midnight in a cabman shelter in Harrow Road but before the dawn my courage returned and while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more towards Regent's Park I missed my way among the streets and presently saw down the Long Avenue in the half light of the early dawn the curve of Primrose Hill on the summit towering up to the fading stars was a third Martian erect and motionless like the other an insane resolved possessed me I would die and end it and I would save myself even the trouble of killing myself I marched on recklessly towards this Titan and then as I drew nearer and the light grew I saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about the hood at that my heart gave a bound and I began running along the road I hurried through the red weed that choked St Edmunds Terrace I waded breast high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from the waterworks towards the Albert Road and emerged upon the grass before the rising of the sun great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the hill making a huge redoubt of it it was the final and largest place the Martians had made and from behind these heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky against the skyline an eager dog ran and disappeared the thought that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible I felt no fear only a wide trembling exultation as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster out of the hood hung length shreds of brown at which the hungry birds pecked and tore in another moment I had scrambled up the earth and rampart and stood upon its crest and the interior of the redoubt was below me a mighty space it was with gigantic machines here and there within it huge mounds of material and strange shelter places and scattered about it some in their overturned war machines some in the now rigid handling machines and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row with a Martians dead slain by the putrefactive and diseased bacteria against which their systems were unprepared slain as the redweed was being slain slain after all man's devices had failed by the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon this earth for so it had come about as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds these germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things taken toll of our pre-human ancestors since life began here but by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power to no germs do we succumb without a struggle and to many those that cause putrefaction in dead matter for instance our living frames are altogether immune but there are no bacteria in Mars and directly these invaders arrived directly they drank and fed our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed dying and rotting even as they went to and fro it was inevitable by the toll of a billion deaths man has brought his birthright of the earth and it is his against all comers it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are for neither do men live nor die in vain here and there they were scattered nearly 50 altogether in that great gulf they had made overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be to me also at that time this death was incomprehensible all I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead for a moment I believed that the destruction of Sena Cherib had been repeated that God had repented that the angel of death had slain them in the night I stood staring into the pit and my heart lighted gloriously even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays the pit was still in darkness the mighty engines so great and wonderful in their power and complexity in their torturous forms rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the light a multitude of dogs I could hear fought over the bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit far below me across the pit on its father lip flat and vast and strange lay the great flying machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them death had come not a day too soon at the sound of a coring overhead looked up at a huge fighting machine that would fight no more forever at the scattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primoz Hill I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, inhaled now in birds stood those other two Martians that I had seen overnight just a death had overtaken them the one had died even as it had been crying to its companions perhaps it was the last to die and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted they glittered now harmless tripod towers of shining metal in the brightness of the rising sun all about the pit and saved us by a miracle from everlasting destruction stretched the great mother of cities those who have only seen London veiled in her somber robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses eastward over the blackened ruins of the Albert terrace and the splintered spire of the church the sun blazed dazzlingly in a clear sky and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and glared with a white intensity northward were Kilburn and Hampstead blue and crowded with houses westward the great city was dimmed and southward beyond the Martians the green waves of Regent's Park the Langham Hotel the Dome of the Albert Hall the Imperial Institute the Golden Road came out clear and little in the sunrise the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond far away and blue were the Surrey Hills and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods the Dome of St. Paul's was dark against the sunrise and injured I saw for the first time by a huge gaping cavity on its western side and as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches and as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back and that men might still live in the streets of this dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful I felt a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears the torment was over even that day the healing would begin the survivors of the people scattered over the country leaderless, lawless, foodless like sheep without a shepherd the thousands who had fled by sea would begin to return the pulse of life going stronger and stronger would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares whatever destruction was done the hand of the destroyer was stayed all the gaunt wrecks the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill would constantly be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels at the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God in a year, thought I in a year with overwhelming force came the thought of myself of my wife and the old life of hope and tender helplessness that had ceased forever end of chapter 8 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org of the next three days I know nothing I have learned since that so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night one man, the first, had gone to St Martin Le Grand and, while I shouted in the cabman's hut, had contrived to telegraph to Paris thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world a thousand cities chilled by ghastly apprehension suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the pit already men, weeping with joy as I have heard, shouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout were making up trains even as near as crew to descend upon London the church bells that had ceased to fortnight since suddenly caught the news until all England was bell ringing men on cycles, lean faced unkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unholy deliverance shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair and for the food across the channel, across the Irish sea across the Atlantic, corn, bread and meat were tearing to our relief all the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days but of all this I have no memory I drifted, a demented man I found myself in a house of kindly people who had found me on the third day wandering weeping and raving through the streets of St John's Wood they have told me since that I was singing some insane doggerel about the last man left alive hurrah the last man left alive troubles as they were with their own affairs these people whose name much as I would like to express my gratitude to them I may not even give here nevertheless cumbered themselves with me sheltered me and protected me from myself apparently they had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse very gently when my mind was assured again did they break to me what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed with every soul in it by a Martian he had swept it out of existence as it seemed without any provocation as a boy might crush an ant hill in the mere wantoness of power I was a lonely man and they were very kind to me I was a lonely man and a sad one and they bore with me I remained with them four days after my recovery all that time I felt a vague a growing craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so happy and bright in my past it was a mere hopeless desire to feast upon my misery they dissuaded me they did all they could to divert me from this morbidity but at last I could resist the impulse no longer and promising faithfully to return to them and parting as I will confess from these four-day friends with tears I went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty already they were busy with returning people in places even there were shops open and I saw a drinking fountain running water I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking how busy the streets and vivid the moving life about me so many people were abroad everywhere busy in a thousand activities that it seemed incredible that any great proportion of the population could have been slain but then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met how shaggy the hair of the men how large and bright their eyes and that every other man still wore his dirty rags their faces seemed all with one of two expressions a leaping exultation and energy or a grim resolution save for the expression of the faces London seemed a city of tramps the vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent us by the French government the ribs of the few horses showed dismally haggard special balls with white badges stood at the corners of every street I saw a little of the mischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street and there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge at the corner of the bridge too I saw one of the common contrasts of that grotesque time a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of red weed transfixed by a stick that kept it in place it was the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication The Daily Mail I bought a copy for a black and shilling I found in my pocket most of it was blank but the solitary compositor who did the thing had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on the back page the matter he printed was emotional the news organization had not as yet found its way back I learned nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results among other things the article assured me what I did not believe at the time that the secret of flying was discovered at Waterloo I found the free trains that were taking people to their homes the first rush was already over there were few people in the train and I was in no mood for casual conversation I got a compartment to myself and sat with folded arms looking grayly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows and just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails on either side of the railway the houses were black and ruins to Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with powder of the black smoke in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again there were hundreds of out of work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary navvies and we were jolted over a hasty relaying all down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and unfamiliar Wimbledon particularly Wimbledon suffered waltened by virtue of its unburned pine woods seemed the least hurt of any place along the line the wandle, the mole every little stream had a heaped mass of red weed in appearance between butchers meat and pickled cabbage the surrey pine woods were too dry however for the festoons of the red climber beyond Wimbledon with in sight of the line in certain nursery grounds were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder a number of people were standing about it some sappers were busy in the midst of it over it flaunted a union jack flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze the nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with the weed a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows and very painful to the eye one's gaze went without infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastwood hills the line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing repair so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to Maybury plus the place where I and the artillerymen had talked to the hussars and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the thunderstorm here moved by curiosity I turned aside to find among a tangle of red fronds the warped and broken dog cart with the whiteened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed for a time I stood regarding these vestiges then I returned through the pine wood neck high with red weed here and there to find the landlord of the spotted dog had already found burial and so came home past the college arms a man standing at an open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately the door had been forced it was unfast and was opening slowly as I approached it slammed again the curtains of my study fluttered out of the open window from which I and the artillerymen had watched the door and had closed it since the smashed bushes were just as I had left them nearly four weeks ago I stumbled into the hall and the house felt empty the stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had crouched soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the catastrophe our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs I followed them to my study and found lying on my writing table still with the cellar night paper weight upon it the sheet of work I had left the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder for a space I stood reading over my abandoned arguments it was a paper on the probable development of moral ideas with the development of the civilising process and the last sentence with the opening of a prophecy quote in about 200 years I had written quote we may expect the sentence ended abruptly I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning for nearly a month gone by and how I had broken off to get my daily chronicle from the news boy I remembered how I went down to the garden gate as he came along and how I had listened to his odd story of men from Mars I came down and went into the dining room there were the mutton and the bread both far gone now in decay and a beer bottle overturned just as I and the artillery men had left them my home was desolate I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long and then a strange thing occurred it is no use said a voice the house is deserted no one has been here these 10 days do not stay here to torment yourself no one escaped but you I was startled had I spoken my thoughts aloud I turned and the French window was open behind me I made a step to it and stood looking out and there amazed and afraid even as I stood amazed and afraid and my wife my wife white and tearless she gave a faint cry I came she said I knew knew she put out her hand to her throat swayed I made a step forward and caught her in my arms end of chapter 9 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Book 2 Chapter 10 The Epilogue I cannot but regret now that I am concluding my story how little I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled in one respect I shall certainly provoke criticism my particular province is speculative philosophy my knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion I have assumed that in the body of my narrative at any rate in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species were found that they did not bury any of their dead and the reckless slaughter they perpetrated point also to an entire ignorance of the putrefactive process but probable as this seems it is by no means a proven conclusion neither is the composition of the black smoke known which the Martians used with such deadly effect and the generator of the heat rays remains a puzzle the terrible disasters at the Ealing and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigation upon the latter Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green and it is possible that it combines with Argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent of the blood but such unproven speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader to whom this story is addressed none of the brown scum that drifted down the Thames after the destruction of Sheperton was examined at the time and now none is forthcoming the results of an anatomical examination of the Martians so far as prowling dogs had left such determination possible I have already given but everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost complete specimen in spirits at the natural history museum and the countless drawings that have been made from it and beyond that the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific a question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the Martians I do not think that nearly enough attention is being given to this aspect of the matter at present which is in conjunction but with every return to opposition I for one anticipate a renewal of their adventure in any case we should be prepared it seems to me that it should be possible to define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged to keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet and to anticipate the arrival of the next attack in that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge but they might be butchered by means of a gun so soon as the screw opened it seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the failure of their first surprise possibly they see it in the same light Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in affecting a landing on the planet Venus seven months ago now Venus and Mars were in alignment with the Sun that is to say Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on Venus subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disc one needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character at any rate whether we expect another invasion or not our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events we have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for man we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space it may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most faithful source of decadence the gifts of human science it has brought are enormous and it has done much to promote the conception of the common wealth of mankind it may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson and that on the planet Venus they have found a secure settlement be that as it may for many years yet there will certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of that Martian disc and those fiery darts of the sky the shooting stars will bring with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the depth of men the broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be exaggerated before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty surface of our new sphere now we see further if the Martians can reach Venus there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable as at last it must do it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet within its toils dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space but that is a remote dream it may be on the other hand that the destruction of the Martians is only a reprieve to them and not to us perhaps is the future ordained I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind I sit in my study writing by lamp light and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with writhing flames and feel the house behind and about me empty and desolate I go out into the byfleet road and vehicles pass me a butcher boy in a cart, a cab full of visitors a workman on a bicycle children going to school and suddenly they become vague and unreal and I hurry again with the artillery man a hot brooding silence on a night I see the black powder darkening the silent streets and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer they rise upon me tattered and dog bitten they gibber and grow fiercer paler, uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last and I wake, cold and wretched in the darkness of the night I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the Strand and it comes across my mind that they are but the ghosts of the past haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched, going to and fro phantasms in a dead city the mockery of life in a galvanized body and strange too it is to stand on Primrose Hill as I did but a day before writing this last chapter to see the great province of houses dim and blue through the haze of smoke and mist vanishing at last into the vague lower sky to see the people walking to and fro among the flowerbeds on the hill to see the sightseers about the Martian machine that stands there still to hear the tumult of playing children and to recall the time when I saw it all bright and clear cut hard and silent under the dawn of that last great day and strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again and to think that I have counted her and that she has counted me among the dead End of Chapter 10 End of War of the Worlds