 Book 1, Chapter 12, of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Chapter 12, What I Saw at 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 to Londonwood 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 New Haven and go with her out of the country forthwith. For I already perceived clearly that the country about London must inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before such preachers as these can be destroyed. Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder with its guarding giants. Had I been alone, I think I should have taken my chance and struck across country, but the artillery man dissuaded me. It's not 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. Then so 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 fast, which he filled with whisky, 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 all-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. The clock, the slipper, the silver spoon, and the light poor valuables. At the corner turning up towards the post office, a little cart filled with boxes and furniture and horseless, healed over with a broken wheel. The 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 in 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, soddened there from the overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the hill. They pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a song. The woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of the woods. For the most part, the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion still stood. Dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage instead of green. On our side, the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees. It had failed to secure its footing. In one place, the woodmen had been at work on Saturday. Trees felled and freshly trimmed, laying and clearing, with heaps of sawdust by the sawing machine and its engine. Hardbite 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 hoofs, and saw through the tree stems three cavalry soldiers riding slowly towards Woking. We hailed them, and they halted while we hurried towards them. It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of the eight 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 man jumped down the bank into the road and saluted. Gun destroyed last night, sir, had been hiding, trying to rejoin batteries, 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. Giant's an armor, sir, hundred feet high, three legs and a body like aluminum, with a mighty great head and a hood, sir. Get out! said the lieutenant. What confounded nonsense! You all see, sir, they carry a kind of box, sir, 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. Halfway through, the lieutenant interrupted him and looked up at me. I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road. It's perfectly true, I said. Well, said the lieutenant, I suppose it's my business to see it too. Look here, to the artillery man. We're detailed here, clearing people out of their houses. You better go along and report yourself to Brigadier General Marvin and tell him all you know, he's at Weybridge. You know the way? I do, I said. And he turned his horse southward again. Half a mile, you say? At most, I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward. He thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more. Father along, we came upon a group of three men and two children in the road, busy clearing out a laborer'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 by fleet stations, 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 knots of soldiers standing on the bridge over the railway and staring down the line towards working. The day would have seemed very like any other Sunday. Several farm wagons and carts were moving creakily along the road to Adelstone, and suddenly through the gait of a field we saw, across a stretch of flat meadow, six twelve pounders standing neatly at equal distances pointing towards Woking. The gunner stood by the gun's 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 artillery man hesitated out of 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. It's balls and arrows against the ladenins, anyhow, said the artillery man. They haven't seen that fire beam yet. The officers, who were not actively engaged, stood unsteady over the treetops southward, and the men digging would stop every now and again to stare in the same direction. Bifly was in a tumult, people packing, and a score of hussars, some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about, three or four black government wagons with crosses in white circles, and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street. Though 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, angrily expostulating with the corporal, who would leave them behind. I stopped and gripped his arm. Do you know what's over there? I said, pointing at the pine tops that hid the Martians. Eh? said he, turning. I was explaining. These is a valuable. Death, I shouted. Death is coming. And leaving him to digest that if he could, I hurried on after the artilleryman. At the corner, I looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and staring vaguely over the trees. No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established. The whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen in any town before. Cards, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing miscellaneous 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 experiences. In the midst of it all, the worthy vicar was very pluckly holding an early celebration, and his bell was jangling out above the excitement. I and the artilleryman, seated on the steps of the drinking fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. Patrols of soldiers, here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white, were warning people to move now or take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began. We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe, in order to allow the passage of troops and guns to Chelsea, and I have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on at a later hour. We remained in Waybridge until midday, and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near Shepparton Lock, where the Wei and Thames join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little cart. The Wei has a troubled mouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On the Shepparton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the Tower of Shepparton Church. It has been replaced by a spire, rose above the trees. Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet, the flights 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 Shepparton Station. There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea that people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable human beings who might attack and sack the town to be certainly destroyed in the end. Every now and then, people would glance nervously across the way, at the meadows towards Jersey, but everything over there was still. Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet. In vivid contrast with the Surrey side, the people who landed there from the boats went jumping off down the lane. The big ferry boats had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives without offering to help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours. What's that? cried a boatman. And shut up, you foal! said a man near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from the direction of Jersey. A muffled thud, the sound of a gun. The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately, unseen batteries across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. Everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen, say flat meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows, motionless in the warm sunlight. The soldiers all stopped him, said a woman beside me, thankfully. The haziness rose over the treetops. Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke, far away up the river. A puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung, and forthwith the ground heaved under foot, and a heavy explosion shot 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, just say them, yonder. Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armored margins appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat meadows that stretch towards Chertsey and striding towards the river. Little culled figures they seen that burst, going with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds. Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armored bodies glitted in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the guns, growing rapidly larger as they dreamed nearer. One on the extreme left, there are noticed that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, and the ghostly, terrible heat ray I had already seen on Friday night, smoked towards Chertsey and struck the town. At sight of these strange, swift and terrible creatures the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror struck. There was no screaming or shouting but a silence. Then a hoarse murmur and a movement of feet splashing from the water. A man, too frightened to drop the portmante he carried on his shoulder, swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden. A woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me. I turned with the rush of the people, but I was not too terrified but thought. The terrible heat ray was in my mind, to get under water. That was it. Get under water! I shouted, unheeded. I faced about again and rushed towards the approaching Martian, rushed right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water. Others did the same. A boatload of people putting back came leaping out as I rushed past. The stones under my feet were muddy and slippery and the river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet scarcely waist deep. Then as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of hundred yards away I flung myself forward under the surface. The splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the river sounded like thunderclaps in my ears. People were landing hastily on both sides of the river but the Martian machine took no more notice for the moment of the people running this way and that than a man would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot 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 half way across the knees of its foremost legs bent to the further bank and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height again close to the village of Shepparton. Fourth width the six guns which unknown to anyone on the right bank had been hidden behind the outskirts of that village fired simultaneously. The sudden near concussion the last close upon the first made my heart jump. The monster was already raising its case generating the heat ray as the first shell burst six yards above the hood. I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw and thought nothing of the other four Martian monsters. My attention was riveted upon the nearer incident simultaneously to other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted round in time to receive but not in time to dodge the fourth shell. The shell burst clean in the face of the thing. The hood bulged flash was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and glittering metal. Hit shouty lie 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 exaltation. The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle and no longer healing its steps and with the camera that fired the heat ray now rigidly upheld. It reeled swiftly upon Sheperton. The living intelligence the Martian within the hood was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven and the thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight line incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Sheperton Church smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done. Swerved to side, 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 that almost scaldingly hot came sweeping round the bend upstream. I saw people struggling shawwards 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 patent need of self-preservation. I splashed through 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 in the river and for the most part submerged. Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash of spray and mud and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck like living arms and save for the helpless purposelessness of these movements. It was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life amid the waves. Enormous quantities of 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 town. A man knee deep near the towing path shouted inaudibly to me, appointed. Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic strides down the river bank from the direction of Chertsey. The shepherds and guns spoke this time unavailingly. At that I ducked at once under water and holding my breath until movement was in agony. Lungs are painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me and rapidly growing hotter. When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the hair and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white fog that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was deafening. Then I saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified by the mist. They had passed by me and two were stooping over the frothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade. The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps 200 yards from me, the other towards Lowlam. The generators of 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 crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame and the crackling and roaring of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river. And as the heat ray went to and fro over Waybridge, its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. The nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint and pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro. For a moment, perhaps I stood there, breast high in the almost boiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. Through the reek, I could see the people who had been with me in the river, scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running to and fro in utter dismay on the towing path. Then suddenly the white flashes of the heat ray came leaping toward 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 Shepparton and the water in its track rose in a boiling wheel crested with steam. I turned shawed. In another moment, the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling point, had rushed upon me. I screamed aloud and scalded, half-blinded, agonised. I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly. In full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare, gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the way and Thames, I expected nothing but death. I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a score of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel, whirling it this way and that and lifting again of a long suspense. And then of the four, carrying the debris of the comrade between them. Now clear and then presently, faint through a veil of smoke, receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of river and meadow. And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle I had escaped. End of Book 1, Chapter 12, Book 1, Chapter 13, of the War of the Worlds. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 13 How I Fell in with the Cura After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons, the Martians retreated to their original position upon horse all common and in their haste and encumbered with the debris of their smashed companion, they no doubt overlooked many such astray 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. A sudden, dreadful and destructive their advent would have been as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago. But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed Cylinder on its interplanetary flight. Every 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 and through the charred and desolated area perhaps 20 square miles altogether that encircled the Martian encampment on horse all common through charred and ruined villages among the green trees through the blackened and smoking arcades that have been but a day ago pine spinnies 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 away the cylinder save at the price of his life. It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the afternoon going to and fro transferring everything from the second and third cylinders the second in Adelstone golf blinks and the third at Piraford to their original pit on horse all common. Over that, above the blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and wide stood one as sentinel while the rest abandoned their vast fighting machines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work there far into the night and the towering pillar of dense green smoke that rose there from could be seen from the hills about Merrow and even, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom towns and while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for the next tally and in front of me humanity gathered for the battle I made my way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning waybridge towards London. I saw an abandoned boat very small and remote drifting downstream and throwing off most of my sodden clothes I went after it gained it and so escaped out of that destruction. There were no wars in the boat but I contrived to paddle as well as my par-boiled hands would allow down the river towards Halliford and Walton going very tediously and continuously looking behind me as you may well understand. I followed the river because I considered that the water gave me my best chance of escape should these giants return. The hot water from the 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 waybridge. Halliford, it seemed, was deserted and several of the houses facing the river were on fire. It was strange to see the place quite tranquil quite desolate under the hot blue sky with the smoke and little throats 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 bareback. 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 lay down again in the shadow of a hedge. I seemed to remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last spurt. I was also very thirsty and bitterly regretful I had drunk no more water. It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife. I cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead worried me excessively. I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate so that I probably dosed. I became aware of him as a seated figure in a suit smudged shirt sleeves and with his upturned clean shaven face staring at a faint flickering that danced over the sky. The sky was what is called a mackerel sky. Rose and rose are faint down blooms 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 daresay he found me a strange enough figure. Naked, saved from my water-soaked trousers and socks, scalded and my face and shoulders blackened by the smoke. His face was a fair weakness. His chin retreated and his hair laying crisp almost flaxen curls on his low forehead. His eyes were rather large, pale blue and blankly staring. He spoke abruptly, looking vacantly away from me. What does it mean? What do these things mean? He said. I stared at him and made no answer. He extended a thin white hand and spoke in an almost complaining tone. Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over. I was walking through the road to clear my brain for the afternoon and then fire, earthquake, death, as if it were Sodom and Gomorrah. All our work undone, all the work. What are these Martians? What are we? I answered, clearing my throat. He gripped his knees and turned to look at me again. For half a minute, perhaps, he stared silently. I was walking through the road 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 Waveridge 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 goeth up forever and ever. He shouted. His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of Waveridge. 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 Waveridge. Had driven him to the very verge of his reason. Are we far from Sumbury? 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 Sumbury? Only this morning I officiated a early celebration. Things have changed, I said quietly. You must keep your head. There is still hope. Hope? Yes, plentiful hope, for all this destruction. I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first, but as I went on, the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their former stare, and his regard wandered from me. This must be the beginning of the end, he said, interrupting me. The end? The great and terrible day of the Lord, when men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them, hide them from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne. I began to understand the position. I ceased my labored reasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand on his shoulder. Dear man, said I, you are scared out of your wits. What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes have done before to men. Did you think God had exempted Waveridge? He is not an insurance agent. For a time he sat in blank silence. But how can we escape? He asked, suddenly. They are invulnerable. They are pitiless. Neither the one, nor perhaps the other, I answered, and the mightier they are, the more sane and wary should we be. One of them was killed yonder, not three hours ago. Killed? said, staring about him. How can God's 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 signaling 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, with those hills, rise about Richmond and Kingston, and the trees give cover. Earthworks are being thrown up and guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be coming this way again. And even as I spoke, he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a gesture. Listen, he said. From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance of distant guns and the remote, weird crying. Then everything was still. The cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us. High in the west the crescent moon hung faint on pale above the smoke of waybridge and shepherton and the hot steel splendor of the sunset. We had better follow this path, I said, northward. End of Book 1, Chapter 13, Book 1, Chapter 14 of the War of the Worlds. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Chapter 14, In London. My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. He was a medical student working for an imminent examination. And he heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity. The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number of people with a quick-firing gun. So the story ran. The telegram concluded with the words, formidable as they seem to be, the Martians have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and indeed seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due to the relative strength of the Earth's reputational energy. On that last text, the 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, and the burning of the pine woods between Woking and Wavebridge, and Civil Eight. Then, the St. James's Gazette, in an extra-special edition, announced the bare fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication. This was thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the line. Nothing more of the fighting was known that night. The night of my drive to Leatherhead and back. My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the description in the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from my house. He made up his mind to run down that night to me in order, as he says, to see the things before they were killed. He 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-fleets and Woking junction, had occurred. We're running the theatre trains, which usually pass through Woking, round by Virginia Water, or Guildford. They were busy making the necessary arrangements of the Sdempton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions. An octurnal 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 paper conveyed. The majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers. The habits of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the Londoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors. About seven o'clock last night, the Martians came out of the cylinder, and moving 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. Maxim's have been absolutely useless against their armour. The field guns have been disabled by them. Flying Hussars have been galloping into Jersey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Jersey or Windsor. Great anxiety prevailed 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 practically nothing more to tell the people until late in the afternoon when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and Waverich and all the districts were pouring along the roads of 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 bought a referee. He became alarmed at the news in this and went again to Waterloo Station to find out if communications 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, alarmed only on the account of the local residents, that the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise detail out of them. There's fighting going on about 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 up and abused the Southwestern company bitterly to my brother. It won't show in up, he said. One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney and Kingston, containing people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings. There's hosts of people driving into Kingston, in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuable and all that, he said. They come from Molesley and Waybridge and Walton and they say there's been done heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing at the Hampton Court Station, but we thought it was thunder. What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't get out of their pit, can they? My brother could not tell him. Afterwards, he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the clients of the Underground Railway and that the Sunday excursionists began to return from all over the Southwestern Lung, Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Q, and so forth, at unnaturally early hours. But not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of. Everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered. About five o'clock, the gathering crowd in the station was immensely excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost invariably closed between the Southeastern and 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 pleasantry. You'll get it, and we're the beast-tammers, and so forth. A little while after that, a squad of police came into the station and began to clear the public of the platforms, and my brother went out into the street again. The church bells were ringing for even song, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge, a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in patches. The sun was just setting, and the clock tower and the houses of Parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was talk of a floating body. One of the men there, a reservist, he said he was, told my brother he had seen the heligraph flickering in the west. In Wellington Street, my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just been rushed out to Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and staring placards. Dreadful catastrophe, they bawled one to the other down Wellington Street. Fighting at Waybridge, full description, repulse of the Martians, landing in danger. He had to give three pence for a copy of that paper. Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full power and terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds, swaying vast mechanical bodies and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even the Martius 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 of Elthausel Common and especially between Woking District and London. Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames and one, fire-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 helium graphs were pushing forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich, even from the North. Among others, long wire guns of 95 tons from Woolwich. All together, 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 five in each cylinder, 15 altogether, and one at least was disposed of, perhaps more. The public would be fairly warned of the approach to danger and the elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of the people in the threatened Southwestern suburbs. And so, with reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed. This was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still wet and there had been no time to have a word of comment. It was curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place. All down Wellington Street, people could be seen fluttering out the pink sheets and reading and the strand was suddenly noisy with the voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. Men came scrambling off buses to secure copies. Certainly this news excited people intensely, whatever their previous apathy. The shutters of a map shop in the strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a man in his Sunday raiment, lemon yellow gloves even, was visible inside the window, hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the glass. Going on along the strand to Trafalgar Square, there was a paper in his hand. My brother saw some of the fugitives from West Surrey. There was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in a cart, such as green roasts used. He was driving from 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 people on the omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs. They stopped at the square as if undecided which way to take and finally turned east along the strand. Some way behind these come a man in workday clothes riding one of those old fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. He was dirty and white in the face. My brother turned down towards Victoria and met a number of such people. He had a vague idea that he might see something of me. He noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of the refugees were exchanging news with people on the omnibuses. One was professing to have seen the Martians. Boy, that's on stilts, I tell you. Striding along like men. Most of them were excited and animated by their strange experience. Beyond Victoria, the public houses were doing a lively trade with these arrivals. At all the street corners, groups of people were reading papers, talking excitedly or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors. They seemed to increase as night drew on until at last the roads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a derby day. My brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory answers from most. None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man who assured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous night. I come from Bifly, he said. The man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning and ran from door to door warning us to come away. And 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. We heard the guns at Chertsey and the folks coming from Weybridge. So I locked up my house and come on. At that 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 the noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all over the south of London. My brother could not hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares but by striking through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly. He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent's Park about two. He was now very anxious on my account and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run even as mine had run on Saturday on military details. He thought of all those silent, expectant guns of the suddenly nomadic countryside. He tried to imagine boilers on stilts a hundred feet high. There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford Street and several in the Malibu Road 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. The sound 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 distant drumming and a clamour of bells. Red brish elections 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 in an attic and as he thrust his head out up and down the street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window sash and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. Inquiries were being shouted They are coming! called a policeman hammering at the door The Martians are coming! and hurried to the next door. The sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Obweny Street barracks and every church within earshot was hard at work killing sleep with oveiment, disorderly toxin. There was a noise of doors opening and window after window in the house's opposite flashed from darkness into yellow illumination. Up the street came galloping a closed carriage bursting abruptly into a noise at the corner rising to a clattering climax under the window and dying away slowly into the distance. Close on the rear of this came a couple of camps the four runners 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 Houston. For a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment watching the policemen hammering at door up the door and delivering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him opened and the man who lodged across the landing came in dressed only in shirt trousers and slippers his braces loose about his waist his hair disordered from his pillow. What the devil is it? He asked. A fire? What a devil of a row! They both creamed 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 of the corners talking. What the devil is it all about? said my brother's fellow lodger. My brother answered him vaguely and began to dress running with each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing excitement and presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came bawling into the street. London in danger of suffocation the Kingston and Richmond defences forced tearful massacres in the Timber 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 Malibu and the Western Park District and St Pancras and Westwood and Northwood in Kilburn and St John's Wood and Hampstead and Eastwood in Shoreditch and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton and Indy 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 street it was the dawn of the great panic London, which had gone to bed on a Sunday night oblivious and inert had awakened in the small hours of Monday morning to a vivid sense of danger unable from his window to learn what was happening my brother went down and out into the street just as the sky between the parapets of the houses grew pink with the early dawn the flying people on foot and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment Black smoke! he heard people crying and again Black smoke! the contagion of such a unanimous fear was inevitable as my brother hesitated on the 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 was stirring, slipping, running presently it would be pouring en masse Northwood Black smoke! the voices cried fire! the bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult the 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 door 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 landlord he came to 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 some ten pounds altogether into his pockets and went out again into the streets end of book one chapter fourteen chapter fifteen of the war of the worlds this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the war of the worlds by H.G. Wells chapter fifteen what had happened in Surrey it was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Hallibur and while my brother was watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge that the Martians had presumed 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 Horsel Pit until nine that night hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of green smoke but three certainly came out about eight o'clock and advancing slowly unconsciously made their way through Bifreeden-Pyroford towards Ripley and Weybridge and so came in sight of the expectant batteries in his ascending 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 siren-like howls running up and down the scale from one note to another it was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St George's Hill that we heard at Upper Hallibur the Ripley gunners unseasoned artillery volunteers who would 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 stepping gingerly among them passed in front of them and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Payne's Hill Park which he destroyed the St George's Hill men however were better led more of a better metal hidden by a pinewood 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 flushed all round him and he was seen to advance a few paces stagger and go down everybody yelled together and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste the overthrown Martian set up a prolonged agulation and immediately a second glittering giant answering him appeared over the trees to the south he was seen that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells the whole of the second volley flew wide at the Martian on the ground and simultaneously both his companions brought their heat rays to bear on the battery the ammunition blew up the pine trees all about the guns flashed into fire and only one or two of the men who were already running over the crest of the hill escaped after this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour the Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood a small round figure oddly suggested from that distance of a speck of blood and apparently engaged in the repair of his support about nine he had finished before his cowl was then seen above the trees again it was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other Martians each carrying a thick black tube a similar tube was handed to each of the three and the seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge and the village of Send south-west of Ripley a dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they began to move and warned the waiting batteries about 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 northward out of Hallibur they moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud for a milky mist covered the hills 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 the 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 remote had been a gray indistinctness towards the evening star away towards Staines the occasional howling of the Martians had ceased they took up their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders in absolute silence it was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns never since the devising of Gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still to us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night literally 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 Paynes Hill but facing that crescent everywhere at Staines, Hamslow, Gitton, Isha, Occam behind the hills and woods south of the river and to cross the flat grass meadows to the north of it wherever a cluster of trees or village houses gave sufficient cover the guns were waiting the signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and vanished and the spirits 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 a sense of all the huge unknown and hidden forces London would had they prepared pitfalls were the powder mills at Houndslow ready as a snare would the Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of their mighty province of houses then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and peering through the hedge came a sound like the distant concussion of a gun another nearer and then another and then the Martian beside us raised his tube on high and discharged it gun-wise with a heavy report that made the ground heave the one towards Staines answered him there was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation I was so excited by these heavy minute guns following one another that I so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to clamber up into the hedge and stare towards somebody as I did so a second report followed and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards Houndslow I expected at least to see smoke or fire or some such evidence of its work but all I saw was the deep blue sky above with one solitary star and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath and there had been no crash, no answering explosion the silence was restored the minute lengthened to three what has happened? said the curate, standing up beside me heaven knows, said I a bat flickered by and vanished a distant tumult of shouting began and ceased I looked again at the Martian and saw he was now moving eastward along the river bank with a swift rolling motion every moment I expected to fire there was some hidden battery to spring upon him but the eating calm was unbroken the figure of the Martian grew smaller as he receded and presently the mist and the gathering night had swallowed him up by a common impulse we clambered higher towards Sunbury was a dark appearance as though a conical hill had suddenly come into being there hiding our view of the father country and then, promoter 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 cocktails had risen everything had suddenly become very still far away to the south-east, marking the quiet we heard the Martians hooting to one another and then the air quivered again with a distant thud of their guns but the earthly artillery made no reply now at the time we could not understand these things but later on I was to learn the meaning of these ominous cocktails that gathered in the twilight each of the Martians standing in the great crescent I have described had discharged by means of the 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 the one we had seen the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at that time these canisters smashed on striking the ground they did not explode and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy inky vapor coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country and the touch of that 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 into the valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts who want to do and where it came upon water some chemical action occurred and the surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and made way for more the scum was absolutely insoluble and it is a strange thing seeing the instant effect of the gas that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained the vapor did not diffuse as a true gas would do it hung together in banks flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of the air and sank to the earth in the form of dust say that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue of the spectrum is concerned we are still entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over the black smoke clung so closely to the ground even before its precipitation that fifty feet up in the air of the roofs and upper stories of high houses and on great trees there was a chance of escaping its poison altogether as was proved even that night at Street Cobham and Ditton the man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the strangeness of its coiling flow and how he looked down from the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of his inky nothingness for a day and a half he remained there weary, starving in the sun's force the earth under the blue sky and against the prospect of the distant hills of Elwip black expands with red roots, 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 and 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 in Upper Halliford with it we had returned from there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro and about eleven the windows rattled and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been put in position there these continued intermittently for the space of a quarter of an hour sending chance shots at the invisible Martians that Hampton and Ditton and then pale beams of the electric light vanished and were replaced by a bright red glow then the fourth cylinder fell a brilliant green meteor as I learned afterwards in Bushey Park before the guns on the Richmond and Kingston lines of Hill began there was a fitful cannonade far away in the south west 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 nest the Martians spread this strange stifling vapor over the Londonwood country the horns of the Crescent slowly moved apart until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Molden all night through their destructive tubes advanced never once after the Martians at Sir George's Hill was brought down did they give the artillery the ghost of a challenge 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 slope to Richmond Park and the glare of Kingston Hill threw their lives 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 staring at 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 over all the opposition they had aroused in the latter end they certainly succeeded Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements after that no body of men would stand against them so hopeless was the enterprise even the crews of the torpedo boats and destroyers that had brought their quick fires up the Thames refused to stop mutiny 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 fater of those batteries towards Isha 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 limba gunners with their horses and wagons the groups of civilians spectators standing as near as they were permitted the evening stillness the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from Waybridge then the dull residents of the shots the Martians fired and the clumpy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields one may picture too the sudden shifting of the attention the swiftly spreading coils and bellions of that blackness advancing headlong towering heavenward turning the twilight into a palpable darkness a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims men and horses near it seen dimly running, shrieking, falling headlong shouts of dismay the 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 vapour hiding its dead before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of Richmond and the disintegrating organism of government was with a last expiring effort rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight End of Book 1 Chapter 15 Book 1 Chapter 16 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Chapter 16 The Exodus from London So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning The stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent lashing in a foaming tumult around the railway stations banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames and hurrying by every available channel Northwood and Eastwood By 10 o'clock the police organisation and by midday even the railway organisations were losing coherency losing shape and efficiency guttering softening running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body All the railway lines north of the Thames and the southeastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday and trains were being filled People were fighting savagely for standing room in the carriages even at two o'clock By three people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishop's Gate 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 Northwood running roads By midday a marksman had been seen at Barnes and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth cutting off all escape over the bridges in its sluggish advance Another bank drove over Ealing and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill alive but unable to escape After a fruitless struggle to get a board and north-western train at Chalk Farm the engines of the trains that had loaded in the good yard there plowed through shrieking people and a dozen stalwart men fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace My brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm Road dodged a cross through a hurring 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 not withstanding with no further injury than a cut wrist The steep foot of Haberstock Hill was impossible owing to several overturned horses and my brother struck into Balsize Road So he got out of the fury of the panic and skirting the Edgeware Road reached Edgeware about seven fasting and weary but well ahead of the crowd Along the road people were standing in the roadway curious, wandering He was passed by a number of cyclists some horsemen and two motorcars A mile from Edgeware the rim of the wheel broke and the machine became unrideable He left it by the roadside and trudged through the village There were shops half opened in the main street of the place and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning He succeeded in getting some food at an inn For a time he remained in Edgeware not knowing what next to do The flying people increased in number, many of them like my brother seemed inclined to loiter in the place There was no fresh news of the invaders from Mars At that time the road was crowded but as yet far from congested most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles but there were soon motorcars, handsome cabs and carriages hurrying along and the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St Albans It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford where some friends of his lived that at last induced my brother to strike into a quiet lane running eastward Presently he came upon a 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 Barnet He happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers He came upon them just in time to save them He heard their screams and hurrying round the corner saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony shays in which they had been driving while a third with difficulty held the frightened pony's head One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white was simply screaming The other, a dark slender figure slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand My brother immediately grasped the situation shouted and hurried towards the struggle One of the men desisted and turned towards him and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was unavoidable and being an expert boxer went into him forthwith and sent him down against the wheel of the 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 hoofs 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 a 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 pluckly pulled up and returned to his help It seems she had had a revolver all this time but it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked She fired at six yards distance narrowly missing my brother The less courageous of the robbers made off and his companion followed him, cursing his cowardice They both stopped in sight down the lane where the third man lay insensible Take this! said the slender lady and she gave my brother her revolver Go back to the 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 the surgeon living at Stanmore who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance He had hurried home, roused the women their servant had left them two days before Packs and provisions put his revolver under the seat luckily for my brother and told them to drive on to Edgeworth with the idea of getting a train there He stopped behind to tell the neighbours He would overtake them, he said as 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 Edgeworth because of the growing traffic through the place and so they had come into this side lane That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again nearer to New Barney He promised to stay with them at least until they could determine what to do or until the missing man arrived and professed to be an expert shot with 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 of prosecuting this flight He urged the matter upon them We have money! said the slender woman and hesitated Her eyes met my brother's and her hesitation ended So have I! said my brother She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold besides the five pound note and suggested that with that they might get upon a train at St Albans or New Barney 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 Barney my brother leading the pony to save it as much as possible As the sun crept up in 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 Barney a tumultuous murmuring grew stronger they began to meet more people for the most part these were staring before them murmuring indistinct questions jaded, haggard, unclean one man in evening dress passed them on foot his eyes on the ground they heard his voice and looking back at him saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things his paroxysm of rage over he went on his way without once looking back as my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barney 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 ran the corner of the lane from between the villas that guided it at its confluence with the high road came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat gray with dust there were three girls east end factory girls and a couple of little children crowded in the cart there saw tigers around edge where? asked the driver wild eyed, white-faced and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the left he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks my brother noticed a pale gray smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them unveiling 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 leading 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 glide of many wheels the creaking of wagons and the staccato of hoofs the lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads good heavens cried Mrs. Elphinstone what is this you are driving us into? my brother stopped for the main road was a boiling stream of people a torrent of human beings rushing northward one pressing on another a great bank of dust white and luminous in the blaze of the sun made everything within twenty feet of the ground gray 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 wait! my brother heard voices crying make way! it was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road the crowd roared like a fire and the dust was hot and pungent and indeed a little way up the road a villa was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion two men came past them then a dirty woman carrying a heavy bundle and weeping a lost retriever dog with a hanging tongue circled dubiously round them scared and wretched and fled at my brother's threat so much as they could see at the road Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty hurrying people pent in between the villas on either side the 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 wait! wait! 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 edge where had been a scene of confusion chalk far 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 or more impatient vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the villas push on! was the cry push on! they are coming! in one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling eternity! eternity! his voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust some of the people who crowded in the cart whipped stupidly at their horses and quarrelled with other drivers some sat motionless staring at nothing with miserable eyes some nod their hands with thirst or lay prostrates in the bottoms of their conveyances the horses' bits were covered with foam their eyes, bloodshot there were cabs, carriages, shop carts wagons, beyond counting a mail cart a road cleaner's cart marked bestry of St Pancras a huge timber wagon crowded with ruts 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 their weary faces smeared with tears with many of these came men sometimes helpful sometimes lowering and savage fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags wide-eyed, loud-voiced and foul-mouthed there were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along wretched, unkempt men clothed like clerks or shlockmen struggling spasmodically a wounded soldier, my brother noticed men dressed in the clothes of rowy 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 galvanised for a moment into renewed activity the heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude their skins were dry their lips black and cracked they were all thirsty, weary and put sore and amid the various cries one heard disputes reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue the voices of most of them were wholesome weak through a torrent and 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 were 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 by my brother weeping I can't go on! I can't go on! my brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up speaking gently to her and carried her to Miss Elphinstone so soon as my brother touched her she became quite still as if frightened Ellen! shrieked a woman in the crowd with tears in her voice Ellen! and the child suddenly darted away from my brother crying Momma! they are coming said a man on horseback riding past along the lane Out of the way there! pulled a coachman towering high my brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane the people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse my brother pushed a pony in shades back into the hedge and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way it was a carriage with a pole for a pair of horses but only one was in the traces my brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge one of the men came running to my brother where is there any water? he said he is dying fast and very thirsty it is Lord Garrick Lord Garrick said my brother the Chief Justice the water? he said there may be a tap said my brother in some of the houses we have no water I dare not leave my people the man pushed against the crowd towards the gates of the corner house go on! said the people thrusting at him they are coming go on! then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag which split even as my brother's eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground their old hither and thither among the struggling feats of men and horses the man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling he gave a shriek and dodged back and the cartwheel shaved him narrowly way! cried the men all about him make way! so soon as the cab had passed he flung himself with both hands open upon the heap of coins and begun 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 from under the wheels and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back the driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother who ran round behind the cart the multitude in the shouting confused his ears the man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money unable to rise for the wheel had broken his back and his lower limbs lay limp and dead my brother stood up and yelled at the next driver and a man on a black horse came to his assistance get him out of the road said he and clutching the man's collar with his free hand my brother lugged him sideways but he still clutched after his money and regarded my brother fiercely hammering at his arm with a handful of gold go on! go on! shouted angry voices behind way! way! there was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped my brother looked up and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar there was a concussion and the black horse came staggering sideways and the cart horse pushed beside it a hoof missed my brother's foot by a hair's breadth he released his grip on the fallen man and jumped back he saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground and in a moment he was hidden and my brother was 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 a child's want of sympathetic imagination staring with dilated eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still ground and crushed under the rolling wheels let us go back! he shouted and began turning the pony round we cannot cross this hell! he said and they went back a hundred yards the way they had come until the fighting crowd was hidden as they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet deadly white and drawn and shining with perspiration the two women sat silent crouching in their seat and shivering then beyond the bend my brother stopped again Miss Elphinstone was white and pale and her sister-in-law sat weeping too wretched even to call upon George my brother was horrified and perplexed so soon as they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing he turned to Miss Elphinstone suddenly resolute we must go that way, he said and led the pony round again for the second time that day this girl proved her quality to force their way into the torrent of people my brother clunged into the traffic and held back a cab horse while she drove the pony across its head a wagon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter from the shays 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 shays and took the reins from her point the revolver at the man behind he said giving it to her if he presses us too hard no, point it at his horse then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across the road but once in the stream he seemed to lose volition to become a part of that dusty 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 dean 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 the either side of the road and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream some fighting to come at the water and farther on from a low near east barnet they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order trains swarming with people with men even among the coals behind the engines going northward along the great northern railway my brother supposes they must have filled outside London for at that time the furious terror of the people had rendered the central Termini impossible near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon for the violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them they began to suffer the beginnings of hunger the night was cold and none of them dared to sleep and in the evening many people came hurrying along the road nearby their stopping place fleeing from unknown dangers before them and going in the direction for which my brother had come End of Chapter 16 Book 1 Chapter 17 of the War of the Worlds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Chapter 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 Edgeworth and Waltham Abbey and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shuber in S and south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs for 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 that 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 hugest armies Asia has ever seen would have been but a drop in that current and this was no discipline 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 civilisation of the massacre of mankind directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide houses, churches, squares, crescents, gardens already derelict spread out like a huge map and in the southward blotted over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart steadily, incessantly each black splash grew and spread shooting out ramifications this way and that now banking itself against rising ground now pouring swiftly over a crest into a newfound valley exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper and beyond over the blue hills that rise southward of the river the glittering Martians went to and fro calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose and taking possession of the conquered country they do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as that complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition they exploded any stores of powder they came upon cut every telegraph and wrecked the railways here and there they were hamstringing mankind they seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations and did not come beyond the central part of London all that day it is possible that a very considerable number of people in London stuck to their houses through Monday morning certain it is that many died at home suffocated by the black smoke until about midday the pool of London was an astonishing scene steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by the 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 remnants of the cloud of the black vapor appeared between the arches of black fryer's 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 lighter men had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront people were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from above when an hour later a Martian appeared beyond the clock tower and waded down a river nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse of the following of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell the sixth star fell out Wimbledon my brother keeping watch beside the women in his shades in a meadow saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills on Tuesday the little party still set upon getting across the sea made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester the news that the Martians were now in possession of the whole of London was confirmed they had been seen at Highgate and even it was said at Neesdon but they did not come into my brother's ear until the morrow that day the scattered multitudes began to realize 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 eastwards 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 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 neighborhood but this intelligence did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed and the three prestige would all day and heard no more of the bread distribution than this promise nor as a matter of fact did anyone else hear more of it that night fell the seventh star falling upon primrose hill it fell while miss elphinstone was watching for she took that duty alternately with my brother she saw it on wednesday the three fugitives they had passed the night in a field of unlike wheat reached Chelmsford and they're a body of the inhabitants calling itself the committee of public supply seized the pony as provisions and would give nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share in it the next day here there were rumors of Martians at Epping and news of the destruction of walvermappy 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 its chance 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 thirds of 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 can no longer come up the Thames they came on to the Essex coast to harwich and walton and clackton and afterwards to foulness and shubery 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 larger burden a multitude of filthy colliers trim merchant men cattle ships passenger boats petroleum tanks ocean tramps an old white transporter even neat white and gray liners from sadampton and hamburg and along the blue coast across the black water 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 black water almost to molden about a couple of miles out lay an ironclad very low in the water almost to my brother's perception like a waterlogged ship this was the ram thunder child it was the only warship in sight but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea but that day there was a dead calm layer serpents of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the channel fleet which hopped 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 site of the sea mrs elphinstone in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law gave way to panic she had never been out of england before she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country and so forth she seemed poor woman to imagine that the french and the martians might prove very similar she had been growing increasingly hysterical fearful and depressed during the two days journeyings her great idea was to return to stanmore things had 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 all beer at adsorption prices and the three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward there were already a couple of scores of passengers aboard some of whom had expended their last money in securing a passage but the captain lay off the black water until five in the afternoon picking up passages until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded it would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of guns that began about that hour in the south as if in answer the ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags a jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels some of the passengers were of the opinion that this firing came from Shuber in S until it was noticed that it was growing louder at the same time far away in the southeast the masts and upper works of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea in these clouds of black smoke but my brother's attention speedily reverted to the distant firing in the south he fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant gray haze the little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping and the low Essex coast was growing blue and hazy when a martian appeared small and faint in the remote distance advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Falnus at that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear and anger at his own delay and the paddles seemed infected with his terror every solder board stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer instead of 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 and 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 halfway up between sea and sky they were all stalking seaward as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Falnus 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 northwestward my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the approaching terror one ship passing behind another another coming round from broadside to end on steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam sails being let out launches rushing hither and thither he was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything seaward and then a swift movement of the steamboat she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing there was a shouting all about him a trampling of feet and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly the steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands he sprang to his feet and saw to starboard and not a hundred yards from the healing pitching boat a vast iron bulk but the blade of a plow tearing through the water tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam that let towards the steamer flinging her paddles helplessly in the air and then sucking her deck down almost to the waterline aducia 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 fourth width 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 bolt 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 labored side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seawood an unfolding torrent of black smoke from which the ironclad drove clear to the watchers from the steamer lowering the water and with the sun in their eyes it seemed as though she were already among the Martians they saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward and one of them raised the camera like generator of the heat ray he held it pointing obliquely downward and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch it must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white hot iron rod through paper a flicker of flame went up through the rising steam and then the Martian reeled and staggered in another moment he was cut down and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air the guns of the thunder child sounded through the reek going off one after the other and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north and smashed a smack to match wood but no one heeded that very much at the site of the Martians collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together and then they yelled again four surging out beyond the white tumult drove something long and black the flames streaming from its middle parts its ventilators and funnels spouting fire she was alive still the steering gear it seems was intact and her engines working she headed straight for a second Martian and was within a hundred yards of him when the heat ray came to bear then with a violent thud a blinding flash her decks her funnels leapt upward 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 up like a thing of cardboard my brother shouted involuntarily a boiling tumult of steam hid everything again two yelled the captain everyone was shouting the whole steamer from end to end rang with frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea the steam hung upon the water for many minutes hiding the third Martian and the coast altogether and all this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight and when at last the confusion cleared the drifting bank of black vapor intervened and nothing of the thunder child could be made out nor could the third Martian be seen but the ironclads to seaward were now quite close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat the little vessel continued to beat its way seaward and the ironclads receded slowly towards the coast which was hidden still by a marbled bank of 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 ironclads and the steamboat after a time and before they reached the sinking cloud bank the warships turned northward and then abruptly went about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward the coast grew faint and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of clouds that were gathering about the sinking sun then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns and a form of black shadows moving everyone struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding furnace of the west but nothing was to be distinguished clearly a massive smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun the steamboat throbbed on its way through an interminable suspense the sun sank into gray clouds the sky flushed and darkened the evening star trembled into sight it was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed my brother strained his eyes something rushed up into the sky out of the grayness rushing slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the western sky something flat and broad and very large that swept round in a vast curve grew smaller sank slowly and vanished again into the gray mystery of the night and as it flew it rained down darkness upon the land end of chapter 17