# The War of the Worlds (B1 edition) *H. G. Wells* ## I. The Eve of the War *Book One: The Coming of the Martians* No one would have believed it in the last years of the nineteenth century. But this world was being watched, keenly and closely. Minds greater than man’s were watching it, and yet these minds could die, just as men can. Men busied themselves about their many interests. All the while they were being studied. They were studied almost as closely as a man with a microscope studies tiny creatures in a drop of water. Those creatures swarm and multiply, and they live only a short time. Men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, endlessly pleased with themselves. They felt calm and sure of their power over the whole material world. Perhaps the tiny water creatures under the microscope feel the same. No one thought of the older worlds in space as a danger to people. Or if they thought of them, they decided that life there was impossible or unlikely. It is strange to remember some of the ways people thought in those days. At most, people on Earth imagined there might be other men on Mars. Perhaps those men were lower than themselves and ready to welcome missionaries. Yet across the great gulf of space there were other minds. These minds were to ours as ours are to the minds of animals. They were huge, cool and without feeling for us. They looked at this earth with envious eyes. Slowly and surely, they made their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century our comfortable dream came to a terrible end. The planet Mars goes round the sun at an average distance of 140,000,000 miles. I hardly need to remind the reader of this. It receives barely half as much light and heat from the sun as our world does. If the scientists’ theory about how the planets were formed is true, Mars must be older than our world. Long before this earth stopped being melted rock, life on Mars must have begun. Mars is hardly one seventh of the volume of the earth. So it must have cooled faster to the temperature where life could begin. It has air and water, and everything that living things need. Yet man is so vain, and so blinded by his vanity! Up to the very end of the nineteenth century, no writer had this idea. No one suggested that intelligent life on Mars might have developed far beyond our earthly level. No one even suggested that it might have gone beyond it a little. People also did not understand something else. Mars is older than our earth. It has hardly a quarter of the earth’s surface area, and it is further from the sun. So it is further from the beginning of time, and it must also be nearer its end. One day our planet will slowly grow cold. On our neighbour, this cooling has already gone very far. Much about Mars is still a mystery. But we know now that even at its equator the midday temperature is hardly as warm as our coldest winter. Its air is much thinner than ours. Its oceans have shrunk until they cover only a third of its surface. Its seasons change slowly. As they change, huge snowcaps gather and melt around each pole. From time to time the melting snow floods the milder lands between the poles and the equator. For us, that last stage of a dying world is still unbelievably far away. But for the people of Mars it has become a problem of today. This urgent need has sharpened their minds, increased their powers and hardened their hearts. They look across space with instruments, and with minds such as we have hardly dreamed of. At its nearest, only 35,000,000 miles sunward of them, they see a morning star of hope. It is our own warmer planet, green with plants and grey with water. Its cloudy air tells of rich, fertile land. Through its drifting clouds they catch glimpses of wide countries full of people. They see narrow seas crowded with navies. And we men, the creatures who live on this earth, must seem strange and low to them. We must seem at least as strange and low as monkeys and lemurs seem to us. Thinking men already accept that life is a never-ending struggle for existence. It seems that the minds on Mars believe this too. Their world has cooled very far, and this world is still crowded with life. But to them it is crowded only with lower animals. Generation after generation, destruction is creeping upon them. To carry war sunward, to our world, is their only escape. Before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what our own kind has done. We have destroyed without pity and without stopping. We destroyed animals, such as the bison and the dodo, which have now vanished. We also destroyed human races that we thought were lower than ourselves. The Tasmanians were human beings like us. Yet European settlers made war on them until not one was left, and it took only fifty years. Are we so full of mercy that we can complain if the Martians made war in the same spirit? The Martians seem to have planned their arrival with amazing cleverness. Their knowledge of mathematics is clearly far greater than ours. They seem to have made their preparations together, in almost perfect agreement. If our instruments had been good enough, we might have seen the trouble coming far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet. (It is strange, by the way, that for countless centuries Mars has been called the star of war.) But they could not explain the changing markings, even though they mapped them so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready. During the opposition of 1894, a great light was seen on the bright part of the planet. It was seen first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers first heard of it in the issue of *Nature* dated August 2. I think this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun. They had dug a vast pit into their planet, and they made the gun there. From it they fired their shots at us. Strange markings were seen near the place of that blaze during the next two oppositions. No one has explained them yet. The storm broke over us six years ago now. Mars was coming near opposition. Then Lavelle of Java sent amazing news buzzing along the wires of the astronomical exchange. A huge outbreak of glowing gas had appeared on the planet. It had happened towards midnight on the twelfth. He at once looked at it with his spectroscope. It showed a mass of flaming gas, mostly hydrogen, moving towards this earth at a huge speed. This jet of fire had become invisible at about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a giant puff of flame, shot suddenly and violently out of the planet. It came out, he said, “as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.” Those words turned out to be exactly right. Yet the next day the papers had nothing about it, except a little note in the *Daily Telegraph*. The world knew nothing of one of the most serious dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might never have heard of the explosion at all. But I met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was very excited by the news. In his excitement, he invited me to come up that night and help him watch the red planet. In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that night’s watch very clearly. I remember the black and silent observatory. A covered lantern threw a weak light on the floor in the corner. The clockwork of the telescope ticked steadily. There was a little slit in the roof, a long, deep opening with stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about. I could not see him, but I could hear him. Through the telescope you saw a circle of deep blue, with the little round planet swimming in it. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still. It had faint stripes across it, and it was slightly flattened from a perfect circle. It was so small, so silvery and warm—a pin’s head of light! It seemed to tremble a little. But really the telescope was shaking with the movement of the clockwork. The clockwork kept the planet in view. As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller. It seemed to come closer and then move away. But that was only because my eye was tired. It was forty millions of miles away from us—more than forty millions of miles of emptiness. Few people realise how huge the emptiness is in which the dust of the universe floats. Near it, I remember, there were three faint points of light. They were three stars, endlessly far away, that only the telescope could show. All around it was the deep darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty night full of stars. In a telescope it seems far deeper. And something was flying fast and steadily towards me across that unbelievable distance. I could not see it, because it was so far away and so small. It was coming many thousands of miles closer every minute. It was the Thing they were sending us. It was the Thing that would bring so much struggle, disaster and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it as I watched. No one on earth dreamed of that missile, which was flying so straight at its target. That night, too, another jet of gas shot out from the distant planet. I saw it. There was a reddish flash at the edge, and the outline bulged out very slightly. It happened just as the chronometer struck midnight. At once I told Ogilvy, and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty. I stretched my legs clumsily and felt my way in the darkness to the little table where the siphon stood. Meanwhile Ogilvy cried out at the stream of gas that was coming out towards us. That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars. It started just a second or so less than twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness. Patches of green and crimson swam before my eyes. I wished I had a light so that I could smoke. I had no idea what that tiny flash meant. I did not guess all that it would soon bring me. Ogilvy watched till one o’clock, and then he gave up. We lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness lay Ottershaw and Chertsey. All their hundreds of people were sleeping in peace. He was full of ideas that night about the state of Mars. He laughed at the common idea that people lived there and were signalling to us. He thought that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower on the planet. Or perhaps a huge volcano was exploding there. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was for life to develop the same way on two neighbouring planets. “The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night at about midnight. They saw it the night after, and again the night after that. And so it went on for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots stopped after the tenth, no one on earth has tried to explain. Perhaps the gases from the firing caused the Martians trouble. Thick clouds of smoke or dust spread through the clear air of the planet. Through a powerful telescope on earth they looked like little grey patches that kept changing. They hid the planet’s more familiar features. At last even the daily papers woke up to these disturbances. Popular notes about the volcanoes on Mars appeared here, there and everywhere. I remember that the half-serious, half-funny magazine *Punch* made clever use of it in its political cartoon. And all this time, unseen, the Martians’ missiles were coming closer to the earth. They were rushing through the empty gulf of space at many miles a second. Hour by hour and day by day, they came nearer and nearer. Now it seems almost unbelievable to me. That fate was hanging over us, and yet men went about their small business as usual. I remember how delighted Markham was. He had got a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. People today hardly realise how many lively, enterprising newspapers we had in the nineteenth century. As for me, I was very busy learning to ride the bicycle. I was also busy writing a series of papers. They discussed how moral ideas would probably develop as civilisation progressed. One night I went for a walk with my wife. (The first missile could then have been hardly 10,000,000 miles away.) The stars were out, and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her. I pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping up towards the top of the sky. So many telescopes were pointed at it. It was a warm night. On our way home, a group of day-trippers from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us, singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of trains being moved about. They rang and rumbled, and the distance softened the sound almost into music. My wife showed me the bright red, green and yellow signal lights. They hung in a frame against the sky. It all seemed so safe and peaceful. ### Glossary - **microscope**: an instrument that makes very small things look big - **opposition**: the time when Mars is closest to Earth - **casting**: making a metal object by pouring hot liquid metal into a shape - **astronomical exchange**: the service that sent news by telegraph between astronomers - **spectroscope**: an instrument that shows what a light or a gas is made of - **missile**: an object that is shot or thrown at a target - **chronometer**: a very exact clock - **siphon**: a bottle of fizzy water with a tube for pouring - **Signs of the Zodiac**: twelve groups of stars with names, such as the Lion or the Fish - **dodo**: a large bird that could not fly; people killed them all long ago ## II. The Falling Star Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing eastward over Winchester. It was a line of flame high up in the sky. Hundreds of people must have seen it and thought it was an ordinary falling star. Albin described it. He said it left a greenish streak behind it, and the streak glowed for some seconds. Denning was our greatest expert on meteorites. He said that it first appeared at a height of about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him. I was at home at that hour, writing in my study. My French windows face towards Ottershaw, and the blind was up. In those days I loved to look up at the night sky. But I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things must have fallen while I was sitting there. Nothing stranger has ever come to earth from outer space. I could have seen it, if only I had looked up as it passed. Some of the people who saw it fly say that it made a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey and Middlesex must have seen it fall. At most, they thought that another meteorite had come down. No one seems to have bothered to look for the fallen mass that night. But poor Ogilvy had seen the shooting star. He was sure that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw and Woking. So he got up very early in the morning, meaning to find it. And find it he did, soon after dawn, not far from the sand-pits. The object had hit the ground with great force and made an enormous hole. Sand and gravel had been thrown violently in every direction over the heath. They lay in heaps that could be seen a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire to the east, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn. The Thing itself lay almost completely buried in sand. All around it lay the splinters of a fir tree, which it had smashed to pieces as it came down. The part that showed looked like a huge cylinder. It was covered with a thick, scaly, dull brown crust, which softened its shape. It was about thirty yards across. Ogilvy went closer to the mass. He was surprised at its size, and even more at its shape. Most meteorites are more or less round. But it was still so hot from its flight through the air that he could not go near it. He heard a stirring noise inside the cylinder. He thought it came from the surface cooling unevenly. At that time he did not imagine that it might be hollow. He stayed standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself. He stared at its strange appearance. He was astonished most of all by its unusual shape and colour. Even then he dimly felt that someone had planned its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still. The sun was just rising over the pine trees towards Weybridge, and it was already warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning. There was certainly no breeze. The only sounds were the faint movements inside the ashy cylinder. He was all alone on the common. Then suddenly he noticed something, and it gave him a shock. Some of the grey clinker was falling off the round edge of the end. This clinker was the ashy crust that covered the meteorite. It was dropping off in flakes and raining down on the sand. Suddenly a large piece came off. It fell with a sharp noise, and his heart jumped with fright. For a minute he hardly understood what this meant. The heat was terrible. But he climbed down into the pit, close to the great mass, to see the Thing more clearly. Even then he thought that the cooling of the body might explain it. But one fact troubled that idea. The ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder. And then he saw something else. Very slowly, the round top of the cylinder was turning on its body. The movement was so slow that he only discovered it through a black mark. Five minutes ago the mark had been near him. Now it was on the other side of the circle. Even then he hardly understood what this meant. Then he heard a dull grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so. Suddenly he understood. The cylinder was made by someone—it was hollow—and its end screwed out! Something inside the cylinder was unscrewing the top! “Good heavens!” said Ogilvy. “There’s a man in it—men in it! Half roasted to death! Trying to escape!” At once, with a quick jump of thought, he connected the Thing with the flash on Mars. The thought of the creature shut up inside was so terrible to him that he forgot the heat. He went forward to the cylinder to help turn the top. But luckily the heat coming off the metal stopped him before he burned his hands on it. The metal was still glowing. He stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then he turned, scrambled out of the pit and ran wildly into Woking. It must have been about six o’clock then. He met a waggoner and tried to make him understand. But his story and his appearance were so wild that the man simply drove on. His hat had fallen off in the pit. He had no more success with the potman, who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell Bridge. The fellow thought he was a madman who had escaped. He tried to shut him in the taproom, but he did not manage it. That calmed Ogilvy down a little. Then he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden. He called to him over the fence and made himself understood. “Henderson,” he called, “you saw that shooting star last night?” “Well?” said Henderson. “It’s out on Horsell Common now.” “Good Lord!” said Henderson. “Fallen meteorite! That’s good.” “But it’s something more than a meteorite. It’s a cylinder—an artificial cylinder, man! And there’s something inside.” Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand. “What’s that?” he said. He was deaf in one ear. Ogilvy told him everything he had seen. It took Henderson a minute or so to take it in. Then he dropped his spade, grabbed his jacket and came out into the road. The two men hurried back to the common at once. They found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But now the sounds inside had stopped. A thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was going in or coming out at the edge, with a thin, sizzling sound. They listened. They knocked on the scaly, burnt metal with a stick, but there was no answer. So they both decided that the man or men inside must be unconscious or dead. Of course the two men could do nothing. They shouted words of comfort and promises. Then they went back to the town to get help. You can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and untidy. They ran up the little street in the bright sunlight. The shopkeepers were just taking down their shutters, and people were opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went straight into the railway station to telegraph the news to London. The newspaper articles about Mars had prepared people’s minds for the idea. By eight o’clock a number of boys and men without work had already set off for the common. They wanted to see the “dead men from Mars.” That was the form the story took. I first heard of it from my newspaper boy at about a quarter to nine. I had gone out to get my *Daily Chronicle*. Of course I was startled. I went out at once, across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits. ### Glossary - **meteorite**: a piece of rock from space that falls to Earth - **French windows**: glass doors that open onto a garden - **heath**: open wild land with low plants - **clinker**: hard ash, like the ash left after a fire - **artificial**: made by people, not by nature - **waggoner**: a man who drives a horse and cart - **potman**: a man who works in a pub - **taproom**: the bar room of a pub - **telegraph**: to send a short message quickly by electric cable ## III. On Horsell Common I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people around the huge hole where the cylinder lay. I have already described how that enormous mass looked, stuck deep in the ground. The grass and gravel around it looked burnt, as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt the crash had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there. I think they saw that nothing could be done for the moment. They had gone away to have breakfast at Henderson’s house. Four or five boys were sitting on the edge of the pit with their feet hanging down. They were amusing themselves by throwing stones at the giant mass, until I stopped them. After I had spoken to them about it, they began to play “touch.” They ran in and out of the group of people standing about. Among these people were two cyclists and a gardener who sometimes worked for me. There was a girl carrying a baby, and Gregg the butcher with his little boy. There were also two or three loafers and golf caddies who usually hung about the railway station. There was very little talking. In those days few of the common people in England knew more than the vaguest things about astronomy. Most of them were staring quietly at the end of the cylinder, which was big and flat like a table. It was still just as Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I think people had expected a heap of burnt bodies. This lifeless mass disappointed them. Some went away while I was there, and other people came. I climbed down into the pit. I thought I heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly stopped turning. Only when I got this close did I see how strange this object was. At first sight it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the road. It was even less exciting, in fact. It looked like a rusty gas float. You needed some scientific education to see what was unusual about it. The grey scale on the Thing was not ordinary rust. And the yellowish-white metal shone in the crack between the lid and the cylinder. Its colour was not like any metal we know. “Extra-terrestrial” meant nothing to most of the people watching. At that time I was quite sure in my own mind that the Thing had come from the planet Mars. But I thought it unlikely that there was any living creature inside it. I thought the unscrewing might happen by itself, like a machine. In spite of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men on Mars. My mind ran on with wild ideas. Perhaps it held written papers. Then there might be difficulties with translating them. Perhaps we would find coins and models in it, and so on. Yet it was a little too large for me to feel sure of this idea. I was impatient to see it opened. At about eleven o’clock nothing seemed to be happening. So I walked back to my home in Maybury, full of these thoughts. But I found it difficult to start work on my studies of ideas. In the afternoon the common looked very different. The early editions of the evening papers had startled London with enormous headlines: “A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS.” “REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,” and so on. Also, Ogilvy had sent a wire to the Astronomical Exchange. It had woken up every observatory in the three kingdoms. Half a dozen flys or more from Woking station were standing in the road by the sand-pits. There was a basket-chaise from Chobham, and a rather grand carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of bicycles. Also, a large number of people must have walked from Woking and Chertsey. They came in spite of the heat of the day. So altogether there was quite a large crowd. Among them were one or two brightly dressed ladies. It was burning hot. There was not a cloud in the sky, and not a breath of wind. The only shade came from a few scattered pine trees. The burning heather had been put out. But the flat ground towards Ottershaw was black as far as you could see. Thin lines of smoke still rose straight up from it. A clever sweet-seller in the Chobham Road had sent his son up with a barrow. It was full of green apples and ginger beer. I went to the edge of the pit. In it there was a group of about half a dozen men. There were Henderson and Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man. I learned afterwards that he was Stent, the Astronomer Royal. There were also several workmen with spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving orders in a clear, high voice. He was standing on the cylinder, which was clearly much cooler now. His face was red and running with sweat, and something seemed to have annoyed him. A large part of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower end was still buried. Ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit. At once he called to me to come down. He asked me if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of the manor. The growing crowd, he said, was getting badly in the way of their digging, especially the boys. They wanted a light fence put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring could still be heard inside the case now and then. But the workmen had not been able to unscrew the top, because there was nothing on it to hold. The case seemed to be enormously thick. Perhaps the faint sounds we heard were really a loud noise inside. I was very glad to do as he asked. That way I would be one of the special people allowed inside the planned fence. I did not find Lord Hilton at his house. But they told me he was expected from London by the six o’clock train from Waterloo. It was then about a quarter past five. So I went home, had some tea, and walked up to the station to meet him. ### Glossary - **loafer**: a person who stands around doing nothing - **golf caddie**: a person who carries a golf player’s clubs - **gas float**: a large round tank for storing gas - **extra-terrestrial**: coming from outside the earth - **wire**: a telegram, a short message sent by electric cable - **the three kingdoms**: England, Scotland and Ireland - **fly** (plural **flys**)**: a light carriage pulled by a horse, which you could hire - **basket-chaise**: a small, light carriage made partly of basketwork - **Astronomer Royal**: the most important astronomer in Britain - **lord of the manor**: the man who owns most of the land around a village ## IV. The Cylinder Opens When I returned to the common, the sun was setting. Small groups of people were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two people were going back. The crowd around the pit had grown. It stood out black against the lemon-yellow sky. There were perhaps a couple of hundred people. I heard raised voices, and some sort of struggle seemed to be going on around the pit. Strange ideas passed through my mind. As I came nearer, I heard Stent’s voice: “Keep back! Keep back!” A boy came running towards me. “It’s a-movin’,” he said to me as he passed. “A-screwin’ and a-screwin’ out. I don’t like it. I’m a-goin’ ’ome, I am.” I went on to the crowd. I think there were really two or three hundred people there. They were pushing and shoving one another with their elbows. The one or two ladies there were pushing as hard as anyone. “He’s fallen in the pit!” someone cried. “Keep back!” several people said. The crowd swayed a little, and I pushed my way through. Everyone seemed very excited. I heard a strange humming sound from the pit. “I say!” said Ogilvy. “Help keep these idiots back. We don’t know what’s in the confounded thing, you know!” I saw a young man standing on the cylinder. I believe he was a shop assistant in Woking. He was trying to climb out of the hole again. The crowd had pushed him in. The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from inside. Nearly two feet of shining screw stuck out. Somebody stumbled against me, and I very nearly fell onto the top of the screw. I turned. As I did so, the screw must have come out. The lid of the cylinder fell onto the gravel with a loud, ringing crash. I pushed my elbow into the person behind me and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a moment the round hole looked completely black. I had the sunset in my eyes. I think everyone expected to see a man come out. Perhaps he would be a little different from us men on Earth, but still a man in every important way. I know I expected that. But as I looked, I soon saw something moving in the shadow. There were greyish, rolling movements, one above another. Then there were two shining disks, like eyes. Then something like a little grey snake rose up out of the twisting middle. It was about as thick as a walking stick. It wriggled in the air towards me—and then came another. A sudden cold feeling came over me. A woman behind me gave a loud scream. I half turned, but I kept my eyes fixed on the cylinder. Other tentacles were now sticking out of it. I began to push my way back from the edge of the pit. On the faces of the people around me, I saw surprise change into horror. On all sides I heard wordless cries. Everyone was moving backwards. I saw the shopman still struggling on the edge of the pit. Suddenly I was alone. I saw the people on the other side of the pit running away, and Stent was among them. I looked at the cylinder again, and a terror I could not control took hold of me. I stood frozen and staring. A big, greyish, rounded mass was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. It was perhaps the size of a bear. As it swelled up and caught the light, it shone like wet leather. Two large, dark eyes were looking at me steadily. The mass around them was the creature’s head. It was round, and it had, you might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes. Its edge had no lips, and it trembled, panted and dripped spit. The whole creature heaved and shook in jerks. A long, thin tentacle held the edge of the cylinder. Another one swayed in the air. If you have never seen a living Martian, you can hardly imagine how strange and horrible it looked. It had an odd V-shaped mouth, with a pointed upper lip. There were no bony ridges above the eyes. There was no chin under the wedge-shaped lower lip. The mouth never stopped trembling. Groups of tentacles grew round it, like the snakes on the head of a Gorgon. Its lungs breathed noisily in the strange air. It moved heavily and painfully, because the earth’s gravity is stronger than on Mars. And above all, there were its huge eyes, which stared so powerfully. All these things together were full of life and power, but also inhuman, crippled and dreadful. The oily brown skin was somehow like a mushroom. The slow, clumsy, careful movements were more disgusting than I can say. Even at this first meeting, this first sight, I was filled with disgust and dread. Suddenly the creature disappeared. It had fallen over the edge of the cylinder into the pit. It landed with a thud, like a great mass of leather falling. I heard it give a strange, thick cry. At once another of these creatures appeared, dark in the deep shadow of the opening. I turned and ran madly towards the nearest group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away. But I ran sideways and stumbled, because I could not turn my face away from these things. I stopped among some young pine trees and furze bushes, out of breath. There I waited to see what would happen next. The common around the sand-pits was dotted with people. Like me, they stood in a terror that was half fascination. They were staring at these creatures. Or really they were staring at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit where they lay. And then, with fresh horror, I saw a round, black object. It was bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in. Against the hot western sun, it looked like a little black ball. Now he got his shoulder and knee up. Then he seemed to slip back again until only his head showed. Suddenly he disappeared. I thought I heard a faint scream. For a moment I wanted to go back and help him. But my fear was stronger. Then nothing at all could be seen. The deep pit and the heap of sand made by the cylinder’s fall hid everything. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight. Perhaps a hundred people or more stood in a great uneven circle, and their number was getting smaller. They stood in ditches, behind bushes, and behind gates and hedges. They said little to one another, only short, excited shouts. And they stared and stared hard at a few heaps of sand. The ginger-beer barrow stood alone and abandoned, black against the burning sky. In the sand-pits stood a row of empty carriages. Their horses were eating out of nosebags or scraping the ground with their hooves. ### Glossary - **shoving**: pushing hard and roughly - **confounded**: an old word to show you are annoyed, like “stupid” or “terrible” - **shopman**: a man who works in a shop - **tentacle**: a long, soft arm, like the arm of an octopus - **Gorgon**: a monster from Greek stories, with snakes instead of hair - **gravity**: the force that pulls things down towards the ground - **furze**: a wild bush with sharp points and yellow flowers - **barrow**: a small cart that a person pushes - **nosebag**: a bag of food that hangs on a horse’s head ## V. The Heat-Ray I had seen the Martians come out of the cylinder. They had travelled in it from their planet to the earth. After that, a kind of fascination held me and stopped me from moving. I stayed standing knee-deep in the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. Inside me, fear and curiosity were fighting a battle. I did not dare to go back towards the pit. But I had a passionate wish to look into it. So I began to walk in a big curve, looking for a place with a good view. All the time I kept looking at the heaps of sand that hid these newcomers to our earth. Once a group of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset. At once they were pulled back again. After that, a thin rod rose up, joint by joint. On its top there was a round disk, which spun with a wobbling movement. What could be going on there? Most of the people watching had gathered in one or two groups. One was a little crowd towards Woking. The other was a small group of people in the direction of Chobham. Clearly they felt the same struggle in their minds as I did. There were few people near me. I went up to one man and spoke to him. I saw that he was a neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name. But it was hardly a time for clear conversation. “What ugly *brutes*!” he said. “Good God! What ugly brutes!” He said this over and over again. “Did you see a man in the pit?” I said. But he did not answer that. We stopped talking and stood watching side by side for a time. I think we got a certain comfort from being together. Then I moved to a little hill, which made me a yard or more higher. When I looked for him a little later, he was walking towards Woking. The sunset faded into twilight before anything more happened. The crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow. I could now hear a faint murmur from it. The little group of people towards Chobham broke up. There was hardly any sign of movement from the pit. This, more than anything, gave people courage. I suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped people to feel confident again. In any case, as darkness came on, a slow movement began on the sand-pits. It stopped and started. The evening around the cylinder stayed still and quiet, and so the movement seemed to grow stronger. Black upright figures in twos and threes would move forward, stop, watch and move forward again. As they did so they spread out in a thin, uneven half-circle. Its two thin ends seemed about to close round the pit. I, too, began to move towards the pit from my side. Then I saw that some cab drivers and others had walked boldly into the sand-pits. I heard the loud noise of hooves and the grinding of wheels. I saw a boy pushing away the barrow of apples. And then I saw a little dark group of men coming from the direction of Horsell. They were within thirty yards of the pit. The man at the front was waving a white flag. This was the Deputation. People had quickly talked it over. The Martians had ugly, disgusting bodies, but they were clearly intelligent creatures. So it had been decided to show them that we were intelligent too. The men would approach them and make signals. Flutter, flutter went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. It was too far away for me to recognise anyone there. But afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent and Henderson were among the men who tried to make contact. As this little group moved forward, it pulled the circle of people in closer with it. The circle was now almost complete. A number of dim black figures followed the group, keeping a careful distance. Suddenly there was a flash of light. A lot of shining, greenish smoke came out of the pit in three separate puffs. One after the other, they shot straight up into the still air. This smoke was so bright that the sky and the common seemed to grow suddenly darker. (Perhaps I should call it flame, not smoke.) Above was the deep blue sky. Towards Chertsey were the misty brown stretches of common, with black pine trees on them. As the puffs rose, all this seemed to darken. It stayed darker after they had gone. At the same time I heard a faint hissing sound. Beyond the pit stood the little group of people, shaped like a wedge, with the white flag at its point. These strange events had stopped them where they were. They were a little group of small, upright black shapes on the black ground. As the green smoke rose, their faces flashed pale green. Then the colour faded again as the smoke disappeared. Slowly the hissing turned into a humming, and then into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a rounded shape rose out of the pit. A faint, ghostly beam of light seemed to flicker out from it. At once there were flashes of real flame among the scattered group of men. A bright glare leaped from one man to another. It was as if some invisible jet hit them and burst into white flame. It was as if each man was suddenly turned to fire for a moment. Then, by the light of the fire that was killing them, I saw them staggering and falling. I saw the people behind them turning to run. I stood staring. I did not yet understand that this was death jumping from man to man in that little crowd far away. I only felt that it was something very strange. There was an almost silent, blinding flash of light, and a man fell forward and lay still. The invisible beam of heat passed over them. Pine trees burst into fire. Every dry furze bush turned into a mass of flames with one dull thud. And far away towards Knaphill I saw trees, hedges and wooden buildings suddenly catch fire in flashes. This flaming death was sweeping round, quickly and steadily. It was an invisible sword of heat, and nothing could escape it. I saw it coming towards me by the bushes that flashed into flame when it touched them. I was too astonished and shocked to move. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand-pits. I heard a horse suddenly scream, and the scream stopped just as suddenly. Then it was as if an invisible, burning hot finger was drawn through the heather between me and the Martians. All along a curving line beyond the sand-pits, the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a crash far away to the left. That was where the road from Woking station comes out onto the common. At once the hissing and humming stopped. The black object, shaped like a dome, sank slowly out of sight into the pit. All this had happened so fast that I had not moved. I stood there, speechless and half blinded by the flashes of light. If that death had swept round in a full circle, it would certainly have killed me in my surprise. But it passed and did not touch me. It left the night around me suddenly dark and strange. The gently rolling common now seemed almost black. Only its roads lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early night. It was dark, and suddenly empty of men. Overhead the stars were coming out. In the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell stood out sharp and black. Behind them was the last light in the west. The Martians and their machines could not be seen at all. Only that thin pole showed, with its restless mirror wobbling on top. Here and there, patches of bushes and single trees still smoked and glowed. The houses towards Woking station were sending up tall flames into the still evening air. Nothing else had changed, except for that and a terrible astonishment. The little group of black dots with the white flag had been wiped out. And yet it seemed to me that the quiet of the evening had hardly been broken. I realised that I was on this dark common, helpless, without protection and alone. Suddenly, like something falling on me from outside, came—fear. With an effort, I turned and began to run, stumbling through the heather. The fear I felt was not reasonable fear. It was a wild, panic terror. I was afraid of the Martians, but also of the darkness and stillness all around me. It took away all my courage, so that I ran weeping silently, as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back. I remember that I felt a strange certainty that something was playing with me. Soon, I thought, I would almost reach safety. Then this mysterious death would jump after me from the pit around the cylinder and strike me down. It would come as fast as light travels. ### Glossary - **fascination**: a very strong interest that you cannot stop - **octopus**: a sea animal with eight long arms - **wobbling**: moving unsteadily from side to side - **brutes**: wild, ugly animals or creatures - **flutter**: to move quickly to and fro in the air, like a flag in the wind - **Deputation**: a small group of people sent to speak for others - **wedge**: a shape that is thick at one end and pointed at the other - **droning**: making a low, steady humming noise - **furze**: a wild bush with sharp points and yellow flowers - **dome**: a round shape like the top half of a ball - **twilight**: the time of half-dark just after the sun goes down - **panic**: sudden, wild fear that you cannot control ## VI. The Heat-Ray in the Chobham Road People still wonder how the Martians can kill men so quickly and so silently. Many think it works like this. Somehow the Martians can make an intense heat inside a special chamber. The walls of this chamber let almost no heat escape. Then they send this heat in a narrow, straight beam against anything they choose. They do this with a polished, curved mirror made of some unknown material. In the same way, the curved mirror of a lighthouse sends out a beam of light. But no one has fully proved these details. However it is done, one thing is certain. A beam of heat is the heart of the matter. It is heat, and it is invisible light instead of visible light. Anything that can burn bursts into flame when the beam touches it. Lead runs like water. It softens iron, and it cracks and melts glass. When it falls on water, the water explodes into steam at once. That night nearly forty people lay under the stars around the pit. They were burnt and twisted so badly that no one could recognise them. All night long the common from Horsell to Maybury was empty of people, and it burned brightly. The news of the killing probably reached Chobham, Woking and Ottershaw at about the same time. In Woking the shops had closed by the time it happened. A number of people, shop workers and others, had heard the stories and wanted to see. They were walking over Horsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges. This road leads out at last onto the common. You can imagine the young people, washed and tidy after their day’s work. They made this new event an excuse to walk together and flirt a little, as they would with any new event. You can picture the hum of voices along the road in the evening dusk. . . . Of course, few people in Woking even knew yet that the cylinder had opened. Poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to the post office. The messenger carried a special telegram for an evening paper. These people came out onto the open common in twos and threes. There they found little groups of people talking excitedly and staring at the spinning mirror over the sand-pits. No doubt the newcomers soon caught the excitement of the moment. By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may have been three hundred people or more there. Others had left the road to go nearer to the Martians. There were also three policemen, and one of them was on horseback. Stent had told them to keep the people back and stop them from going near the cylinder. They were doing their best. Some of the people booed. These were the more thoughtless and excitable ones. To them a crowd is always a chance for noise and rough fun. Stent and Ogilvy had expected that there might be trouble. So as soon as the Martians came out, they had sent a telegram from Horsell to the barracks. They asked for a company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence. After that they went back to lead that unlucky advance. The crowd saw their death, and what they described agrees very closely with what I saw. There were the three puffs of green smoke, the deep humming sound and the flashes of flame. But that crowd of people had a much narrower escape than I did. Only one thing saved them. A small hill of sand and heather blocked the lower part of the Heat-Ray. If the curved mirror had been a few yards higher, no one would have lived to tell the story. They saw the flashes and the men falling. Then something like an invisible hand lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. Then they heard a whistling sound that rose above the droning from the pit. The beam swung close over their heads. It set fire to the tops of the beech trees along the road. It split the bricks and smashed the windows of the house nearest the corner. It set the window frames on fire. Part of the gable of that house came crashing down. There was a sudden thud and hiss, and the glare of the trees catching fire. The crowd was in a panic. For some moments it seems to have swayed back and forth, unsure what to do. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road. Single leaves fell like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then there was crying from the common. There were screams and shouts. Suddenly a policeman on horseback came galloping through the confusion. He had his hands clasped over his head, and he was screaming. “They’re coming!” a woman screamed. At once everyone turned and pushed at the people behind them. They were trying to clear a way back to Woking. They must have run as blindly as a flock of sheep. In one place the road becomes narrow and dark between high banks. There the crowd got stuck, and there was a desperate struggle. Not all of that crowd escaped. At least three people, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled there. They were left to die in the terror and the darkness. ### Glossary - **chamber**: a closed space or room - **lighthouse**: a tower by the sea with a strong light to warn ships - **lead**: a soft, heavy grey metal - **Deputation**: a small group of people sent to speak for others - **telegram**: a short message sent quickly by electric cable - **barracks**: buildings where soldiers live - **twilight**: the time of half-dark just after the sun goes down - **gable**: the pointed top part of a house wall, under the roof - **trample**: to walk heavily on someone or something and hurt it ## VII. How I Reached Home For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except running into trees and stumbling through the heather. All around me were the invisible terrors of the Martians. That cruel sword of heat seemed to swing to and fro above my head. I felt that at any moment it would come down and strike me dead. I came into the road between the crossroads and Horsell, and I ran along it to the crossroads. At last I could go no further. The violence of my feelings and of my flight had exhausted me. I staggered and fell by the side of the road. That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. I fell and lay still. I must have stayed there for some time. I sat up, strangely confused. For a moment, perhaps, I could not understand how I had come there. My terror had fallen from me like a coat. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its button. A few minutes before, only three things had been real to me. There was the hugeness of the night and space and nature. There was my own weakness and pain. And there was death coming near. Now it was as if something turned over, and suddenly I saw everything differently. There was no gradual change from one state of mind to the other. At once I was my everyday self again—a decent, ordinary citizen. The silent common, my wild flight and the flames leaping up seemed like a dream. I asked myself if these things had really happened. I could not believe it. I got up and walked unsteadily up the steep slope of the bridge. My mind was empty except for wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed to have lost all their strength. I dare say I staggered like a drunk man. A head rose over the top of the arch, and a workman carrying a basket appeared. A little boy ran beside him. He passed me and wished me good night. I wanted to speak to him, but I did not. I answered his greeting with a mumble that meant nothing, and I went on over the bridge. Over the Maybury arch a train went flying south. It was a rolling cloud of white smoke lit by fire, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows. Clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of people were talking at the gate of one of the houses. These houses were a pretty little row with pointed roofs, called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real and so familiar. And what lay behind me! It was wild and impossible! Such things, I told myself, could not be. Perhaps I am a man of unusual moods. I do not know how common my experience is. Sometimes I have the strangest feeling of being apart from myself and the world around me. I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere unimaginably far away. I am out of time, out of space, out of all its stress and tragedy. This feeling was very strong in me that night. It was another side to my dream. But the trouble was the complete contrast. Here was all this calm, and there was swift death, flying about not two miles away. There was a busy noise of work from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all lit. I stopped at the group of people. “What news from the common?” I said. There were two men and a woman at the gate. “Eh?” said one of the men, turning round. “What news from the common?” I said. “Ain’t yer just *been* there?” asked the men. “People seem fair silly about the common,” said the woman over the gate. “What’s it all abart?” “Haven’t you heard of the men from Mars?” I said. “The creatures from Mars?” “Quite enough,” said the woman over the gate. “Thenks.” And all three of them laughed. I felt foolish and angry. I tried to tell them what I had seen, but I found I could not. They laughed again at my broken sentences. “You’ll hear more yet,” I said, and I went on to my home. I gave my wife a fright at the door, because I looked so pale and worn. I went into the dining room, sat down and drank some wine. As soon as I could calm myself enough, I told her the things I had seen. The dinner was a cold one. It was already on the table, and it stayed there, forgotten, while I told my story. “There is one thing,” I said, because I wanted to calm the fears I had caused. “They are the slowest things I ever saw crawl. They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. . . . But the horror of them!” “Don’t, dear!” said my wife. She frowned and put her hand on mine. “Poor Ogilvy!” I said. “To think he may be lying dead there!” My wife, at least, did not find my story hard to believe. When I saw how deadly white her face was, I stopped suddenly. “They may come here,” she said, again and again. I made her drink some wine, and I tried to comfort her. “They can hardly move,” I said. I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me. He had explained why the Martians could never make a home on the earth. In particular I spoke about the problem of gravity. On the earth’s surface, gravity is three times as strong as on the surface of Mars. So a Martian would weigh three times as much as on Mars, but his muscles would be no stronger. His own body would feel to him like a heavy coat of lead. That, in fact, was what most people thought. *The Times* and the *Daily Telegraph*, for example, both said so the next morning. But both of them forgot two clear facts that changed things, just as I did. We now know that the air of the earth has far more oxygen than the air of Mars. Or it has far less argon; you can put it either way. This extra oxygen gave the Martians much more energy. Without doubt, it did a lot to balance the greater weight of their bodies. And secondly, we all forgot something else. The Martians were so clever with machines that they could do without muscle power when they needed to. But I did not think of these points at the time. So all my reasoning said that the invaders had no chance. I had wine and food and the comfort of my own table. I also had to reassure my wife. So, little by little, without noticing it, I grew brave and sure of myself. “They have done a foolish thing,” I said, touching my wineglass. “They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living things here. They certainly did not expect any intelligent living things.” “A shell in the pit,” I said, “will kill them all, if the worst comes to the worst.” The great excitement of the day had no doubt made my senses unusually sharp. Even now I remember that dinner table very clearly. I can see my dear wife’s sweet, anxious face, looking at me from under the pink lamp shade. I can see the white cloth with its silver and glass. In those days even writers of philosophy had many little luxuries. And I can see the crimson-purple wine in my glass. They are all as clear as a photograph. At the end of the meal I sat with nuts and a cigarette. I was sorry that Ogilvy had been so careless. And I attacked the Martians for being so timid and so short-sighted. In the same way, some respectable dodo on the island of Mauritius might once have sat proudly in his nest. He might have talked about the shipful of cruel sailors who had just arrived, hungry for meat. “We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.” I did not know it then. But that was the last civilised dinner I would eat for very many strange and terrible days. ### Glossary - **heather**: a low wild plant with small purple flowers that grows on open land - **gasworks**: a factory that makes gas for lamps and cooking - **canal**: a man-made river for boats - **collar**: the part of a shirt that goes round the neck - **caterpillar**: a small, long creature with many legs that later becomes a butterfly - **gravity**: the force that pulls things down towards the ground - **oxygen**: the gas in the air that people and animals need to breathe - **argon**: a gas in the air that does nothing for living things - **shell**: a bomb fired from a big gun - **dodo**: a large bird that could not fly; sailors killed every one of them - **civilised**: belonging to a comfortable, orderly human way of life ## VIII. Friday Night Of all the strange and wonderful things that happened on that Friday, one seems most extraordinary to me. The ordinary habits of our society went on, side by side with the first events of a series. And that series of events was going to throw our whole social order down. Imagine that on Friday night you had drawn a circle on a map. Its centre is the Woking sand-pits, and it reaches five miles out in every direction. Outside that circle, I doubt that a single person felt any different because of the newcomers. There might be some relatives of Stent, or of the three or four cyclists. Or there might be relatives of the London people lying dead on the common. But nobody else’s feelings or habits were changed at all. Of course, many people had heard of the cylinder and talked about it in their free time. But it certainly did not cause as much excitement as an ultimatum to Germany would have done. In London that night, poor Henderson’s telegram was thought to be a canard. It described how the shot was slowly unscrewing. His evening paper wired him and asked him to confirm the story. They received no reply, because the man had been killed. So they decided not to print a special edition. Even inside the five-mile circle, most people did nothing. I have already described the men and women I spoke to. All over the district, people were having dinner or supper. Working men were gardening after their day’s work. Children were being put to bed. Young couples were walking through the lanes, in love. Students sat over their books. Perhaps there was some quiet talk in the village streets. Perhaps it was a new and important subject in the public-houses. Here and there a messenger, or even someone who had seen the later events, caused a rush of excitement. There was shouting, and people ran to and fro. But mostly the daily routine went on as it had done for countless years. People worked, ate, drank and slept, as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. This was true even at Woking station, and at Horsell and Chobham. At Woking junction, until late at night, trains were stopping and going on. Others were moving to and fro on the side tracks. Passengers were getting off and waiting. Everything was going on in the most ordinary way. A boy from the town was selling papers with the afternoon’s news. Only Smith’s had the right to sell papers there, but he sold them anyway. There was the ringing crash of the railway trucks and the sharp whistles of the engines. These sounds mixed with his shouts of “Men from Mars!” At about nine o’clock some excited men came into the station with unbelievable news. They caused no more trouble than drunk men might have done. People travelled noisily towards London and looked into the darkness outside the carriage windows. They saw only a rare, flickering spark that danced up and vanished, from the direction of Horsell. They saw a red glow, and a thin veil of smoke blowing across the stars. They thought that it was nothing more serious than a heath fire. The trouble could only be noticed around the edge of the common. Half a dozen villas were burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages. The people there stayed awake till dawn. A curious crowd waited restlessly on both the Chobham and Horsell bridges. People came and went, but the crowd remained. It was found afterwards that one or two brave people went into the darkness. They crawled quite near the Martians, but they never came back. Now and again a beam of light swept across the common, like the searchlight of a warship. And the Heat-Ray was ready to follow it. Apart from these people, that big area of common was silent and empty. The burnt bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. Many people heard a noise of hammering from the pit. So that was how things were on Friday night. In the centre was this cylinder. It was stuck into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart. But the poison was hardly working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common, still burning slowly in places. Here and there lay a few dark objects, hard to see, in twisted positions. Here and there a bush or a tree was burning. Beyond that was a fringe of excitement. And further out than that fringe, the sickness had not yet spread. In the rest of the world, the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for ages. Soon the fever of war would block every vein and artery. It would kill the nerves and destroy the brain. But that fever had not yet developed. All night long the Martians were hammering and moving about. They never slept and never got tired. They were working on the machines they were getting ready. And again and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky. At about eleven o’clock a company of soldiers came through Horsell. They spread out along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a second company marched through Chobham to spread out on the north side of the common. Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day. One of them, Major Eden, was reported missing. The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge. At midnight he was busy asking the crowd questions. The army clearly understood how serious the business was. The next morning’s papers were able to report what happened at about eleven o’clock. A squadron of hussars, two Maxims and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment set out from Aldershot. A few seconds after midnight, the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a star fall from the sky. It fell into the pine woods to the north-west. It had a greenish colour, and it made a silent brightness like summer lightning. This was the second cylinder. ### Glossary - **ultimatum**: a final warning to another country: do what we ask, or there will be war - **canard**: a false news story - **wired**: sent a telegram - **heath**: open wild land covered with low plants - **villa**: a large house with a garden, outside the centre of a town - **searchlight**: a very strong lamp whose beam can be turned in any direction - **poisoned dart**: a small sharp object with poison on its point, thrown or shot at someone - **cordon**: a line of soldiers around a place, to stop people going in or out - **barracks**: buildings where soldiers live - **squadron of hussars**: a group of soldiers who ride horses - **Maxim**: an early kind of machine gun ## IX. The Fighting Begins Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was also a tired, heavy day, hot and airless. I am told that the barometer went up and down very quickly. I had slept very little, although my wife had managed to sleep, and I got up early. I went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening. But towards the common nothing was moving except a lark. The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his cart and went round to the side gate to ask for the latest news. He told me that during the night troops had surrounded the Martians. Guns were expected. Then I heard a train running towards Woking. It was a familiar sound, and it made me feel better. “They aren’t to be killed,” said the milkman, “if that can possibly be avoided.” I saw my neighbour working in his garden. I chatted with him for a time, and then I walked in to breakfast. It was a completely ordinary morning. My neighbour thought that the troops would be able to capture or destroy the Martians during the day. “It’s a pity they make themselves so unapproachable,” he said. “It would be curious to know how they live on another planet. We might learn a thing or two.” He came up to the fence and held out a handful of strawberries. He was as generous with his garden as he was keen on it. At the same time he told me about the burning of the pine woods near the Byfleet Golf Links. “They say,” he said, “that there’s another of those blessed things fallen there—number two. But one’s enough, surely. This lot’ll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything’s settled.” He laughed in the most cheerful way as he said this. The woods, he said, were still burning, and he pointed out a haze of smoke to me. “They will be hot under foot for days, because of the thick soil of pine needles and turf,” he said. Then he grew serious and spoke about “poor Ogilvy.” After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers. I think they were sappers. They wore small round caps and dirty red jackets. Their jackets were unbuttoned and showed their blue shirts. They had dark trousers, and boots that came up to the calf. They told me that no one was allowed over the canal. I looked along the road towards the bridge. One of the Cardigan men was standing there on guard. I talked with these soldiers for a time. I told them how I had seen the Martians the evening before. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had only the vaguest ideas about them. So they asked me question after question. They said that they did not know who had ordered the troops to move. They thought that there had been an argument at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is much better educated than the common soldier. They talked quite cleverly about the strange conditions of the fight that might come. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves. “Crawl up under cover and rush ’em, say I,” said one. “Get aht!” said another. “What’s cover against this ’ere ’eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground’ll let us, and then dig a trench.” “Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches. You ought to ha’ been born a rabbit, Snippy.” “Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third soldier suddenly. He was a little, thoughtful, dark man, smoking a pipe. I repeated my description. “Octopuses,” he said, “that’s what I calls ’em. Talk about fishers of men—fighters of fish it is this time!” “It ain’t no murder, killing beasts like that,” said the first speaker. “Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish ’em?” said the little dark man. “You carn tell what they might do.” “Where’s your shells?” said the first speaker. “There ain’t no time. Do it in a rush, that’s my tip, and do it at once.” So they discussed it. After a while I left them. I went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could. But I will not bore the reader with a description of that long morning and the even longer afternoon. I did not manage to see the common at all. Even the church towers of Horsell and Chobham were in the hands of the army. The soldiers I spoke to didn’t know anything. The officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found that the people in the town felt quite safe again, because the soldiers were there. I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had made the people on the edge of Horsell lock up their houses and leave. I got back for lunch at about two o’clock, very tired. As I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull. To refresh myself, I took a cold bath in the afternoon. At about half past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper. The morning papers had given only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy and the others. But there was little in the evening paper that I didn’t know. The Martians did not show even an inch of themselves. They seemed busy in their pit. There was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous stream of smoke. It seemed that they were busy getting ready for a struggle. “Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success.” That was the sentence that all the papers repeated. A sapper told me how it was done. A man stood in a ditch and waved a flag on a long pole. The Martians took as much notice of this as we would take of a cow mooing. I must confess that all these weapons and preparations greatly excited me. My imagination became warlike. In my mind I defeated the invaders in a dozen exciting ways. Something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back. At that time it hardly seemed a fair fight to me. The Martians seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs. At about three o’clock a gun began to thud from Chertsey or Addlestone, again and again, at regular times. I learned that they were shelling the pine wood where the second cylinder had fallen. The wood was still burning slowly. They hoped to destroy the cylinder before it opened. But a field gun only reached Chobham at about five. It was to be used against the first group of Martians. At about six in the evening I was having tea with my wife in the summerhouse. We were talking excitedly about the battle that was coming towards us. Then I heard a dull explosion from the common, and right after that a burst of firing. Close after that came a violent, rattling crash, quite near us, that shook the ground. I ran out onto the lawn. I saw the tops of the trees around the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame. I saw the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pointed top of the mosque had vanished. The roof line of the college itself looked as if a hundred-ton gun had been firing at it. One of our chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it. A piece of it flew off and came clattering down the tiles. It made a heap of broken red pieces on the flower bed by my study window. My wife and I stood there amazed. Then I realised what had happened. The college was out of the way now. So the top of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians’ Heat-Ray. At that, I took my wife’s arm and, without a word of explanation, ran with her out into the road. Then I fetched the servant out of the house. She was crying out for her box, and I told her I would go upstairs for it myself. “We can’t possibly stay here,” I said. As I spoke, the firing started again for a moment on the common. “But where are we to go?” said my wife in terror. I thought, confused. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead. “Leatherhead!” I shouted above the sudden noise. She looked away from me, down the hill. The people were coming out of their houses, astonished. “How are we to get to Leatherhead?” she said. Down the hill I saw a group of hussars ride under the railway bridge. Three of them galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College. Two others got off their horses and began running from house to house. The sun shone through the smoke that rose from the tops of the trees. It looked blood red, and it threw a strange, frightening light on everything. “Stop here,” I said. “You are safe here.” And I set off at once for the Spotted Dog. I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart. I ran, because I could see that in a moment everyone on this side of the hill would be moving. I found him in his bar. He had no idea what was going on behind his house. A man stood with his back to me, talking to him. “I must have a pound,” said the landlord, “and I’ve no one to drive it.” “I’ll give you two,” I said, over the stranger’s shoulder. “What for?” “And I’ll bring it back by midnight,” I said. “Lord!” said the landlord. “What’s the hurry? I’m selling my bit of a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What’s going on now?” I explained quickly that I had to leave my home, and so I got the dog cart. At the time it did not seem nearly so urgent to me that the landlord should leave his home. I made sure I took the cart there and then. I drove it off down the road and left it with my wife and servant. Then I rushed into my house and packed a few valuable things. I took the silver we had, and so on. The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this. The wooden fences up the road glowed red. While I was busy with this, one of the hussars came running up on foot. He was going from house to house, warning people to leave. He was moving on as I came out of my front door. I was carrying my treasures, tied up in a tablecloth. I shouted after him: “What news?” He turned and stared. He shouted something about “crawling out in a thing like a dish cover.” Then he ran on to the gate of the house at the top of the hill. A sudden whirl of black smoke blew across the road and hid him for a moment. I ran to my neighbour’s door and knocked. I wanted to be sure of what I already knew. He and his wife had gone to London and had locked up their house. I went in again, as I had promised, to get my servant’s box. I dragged it out and put it beside her at the back of the dog cart. Then I took the reins and jumped up into the driver’s seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise. We were driving fast down the other side of Maybury Hill towards Old Woking. In front of us was a quiet, sunny landscape. There was a wheat field on either side of the road ahead, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw the doctor’s cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick streams of black smoke, with threads of red fire in them, were rising into the still air. They threw dark shadows on the green treetops to the east. The smoke already reached far away to the east and west. It reached to the Byfleet pine woods in the east, and to Woking in the west. The road was dotted with people running towards us. Through the hot, quiet air we could hear sounds, very faint now but very clear. There was the whirr of a machine-gun, which soon stopped. And there was the cracking of rifles, now and then. It seemed that the Martians were setting fire to everything within reach of their Heat-Ray. I am not an expert driver, and I had to turn my attention to the horse at once. When I looked back again, the second hill had hidden the black smoke. I hit the horse with the whip and let him run. I kept going until Woking and Send lay between us and that trembling noise and confusion. I caught up with the doctor and passed him between Woking and Send. ### Glossary - **barometer**: an instrument that measures air pressure and helps to tell what the weather will be - **lark**: a small brown bird that sings while it flies high in the sky - **sapper**: an army engineer who digs and builds - **trench**: a long narrow hole that soldiers dig to hide in - **Horse Guards**: the headquarters of the British army in London - **fishers of men**: words from the Bible; Jesus said his followers would catch people, not fish - **shell**: to fire bombs from big guns at something - **tobacconist**: a person who owns a shop that sells cigarettes and tobacco - **hussar**: a soldier who rides a horse - **dog cart**: a light carriage with two wheels, pulled by one horse - **reins**: the long straps that a driver uses to control a horse ## X. In the Storm Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. Beyond Pyrford there were rich green meadows, and the smell of hay was in the air. The hedges on both sides were sweet and bright with masses of wild roses. Heavy firing had started while we were driving down Maybury Hill. It stopped as suddenly as it began, and the evening was left very peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead safely at about nine o’clock. The horse had an hour’s rest while I had supper with my cousins. I asked them to take care of my wife. My wife was strangely silent all through the drive. She seemed weighed down by fears of something bad. I talked to her and tried to calm her. I pointed out that the Martians were held in the pit by their great weight. At the very most, they could only crawl a little way out of it. But she answered me only in single words. I had made a promise to the innkeeper. Without it, I think she would have begged me to stay in Leatherhead that night. I wish I had stayed! Her face, I remember, was very white as we said goodbye. For my own part, I had been wildly excited all day. Sometimes a kind of war fever runs through a civilised society. Something very like it had got into my blood. In my heart I was not really sorry that I had to go back to Maybury that night. I had heard a last burst of shooting. I was even afraid that it might mean the end of the invaders from Mars. I can best describe my state of mind like this: I wanted to be there at the kill. It was nearly eleven o’clock when I started back. The night was surprisingly dark. I had just walked out of the lighted hall of my cousins’ house, so it seemed black to me. It was as hot and heavy as the day had been. Overhead the clouds were moving fast, but not a breath of wind moved the bushes around us. My cousins’ man lit both lamps on the cart. Luckily, I knew the road very well. My wife stood in the light of the doorway. She watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then she turned suddenly and went inside. My cousins stood side by side and wished me good luck. At first my wife’s fears had spread to me, and I felt a little low. But very soon my thoughts went back to the Martians. At that time I knew nothing about how the evening’s fighting had gone. I did not even know what had started the battle. I came back through Ockham, not through Send and Old Woking. As I came through Ockham, I saw a blood-red glow along the western sky. As I drew nearer, it crept slowly up the sky. There the moving clouds of the coming thunderstorm mixed with masses of black and red smoke. Ripley Street was empty. Apart from a lighted window here and there, the village showed no sign of life. But I nearly had an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford. A small group of people stood there with their backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill. I passed silent houses on my way. I do not know if the people in them were sleeping safely. Perhaps the houses were empty. Or perhaps the people were awake and afraid, watching for the terror of the night. From Ripley until I came through Pyrford, I was in the valley of the Wey. The red glare was hidden from me there. I went up the little hill beyond Pyrford Church, and the glare came into view again. The trees around me shivered with the first sign of the storm that was upon me. Then I heard midnight ringing out from Pyrford Church behind me. And then I saw the shape of Maybury Hill. Its treetops and roofs were black and sharp against the red. Just as I saw this, a fierce green light lit up the road around me. It showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt a pull on the reins. I saw a thread of green fire cut through the moving clouds. It suddenly lit up their confusion and fell into the field to my left. It was the third falling star! Right after it appeared, the first lightning of the coming storm danced out. It was a blinding violet after the green. The thunder burst like a rocket overhead. The horse took control and ran wildly away. A gentle slope runs down towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, the flashes came faster than I have ever seen. The thunderclaps came one on top of another, with a strange crackling sound. They sounded more like a giant electric machine at work than ordinary thunder. The flashing light was blinding and confusing. A thin hail beat against my face in gusts as I drove down the slope. At first I watched little except the road in front of me. Then suddenly my attention was caught by something moving fast down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I thought it was the wet roof of a house. But flash after flash showed that it was moving quickly and rolling. It was hard to see clearly. There was a moment of confusing darkness. Then, in a flash as bright as daylight, three things stood out clear and sharp. I saw the red buildings of the Orphanage near the top of the hill. I saw the green tops of the pine trees. And I saw this strange object. And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? It was a huge tripod, higher than many houses. It was taking huge steps over the young pine trees and smashing them aside as it went. It was a walking engine of shining metal, now moving across the heather. Jointed ropes of steel hung from it. The clattering noise of its movement mixed with the wild noise of the thunder. A flash came, and I saw it clearly. It was leaning over to one side with two feet in the air. Then it vanished. With the next flash it seemed to appear again almost at once, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool, tipped over and rolled violently along the ground? That was the picture those quick flashes gave me. But instead of a milking stool, imagine a great body of machinery on a three-legged stand. Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were pushed apart. They parted like dry reeds when a man pushes through them. They were snapped off and thrown aside. A second huge tripod appeared, and it seemed to be rushing straight towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second monster I lost my nerve completely. I did not stop to look again. I pulled the horse’s head hard round to the right. In another moment the dog cart had tipped over onto the horse. The shafts broke noisily. I was thrown sideways, and I fell heavily into a shallow pool of water. I crawled out almost at once. I crouched under a furze bush, with my feet still in the water. The horse lay without moving. His neck was broken, poor animal! By the lightning flashes I saw the black shape of the overturned dog cart. I saw the outline of the wheel, still spinning slowly. In another moment the giant machine went past me with long steps, up the hill towards Pyrford. Seen nearer, the Thing was unbelievably strange. It was not just a machine without a mind, driving on its way. It was a machine, with a ringing metal step. It had long, bending, shining tentacles, which swung noisily around its strange body. One of them held a young pine tree. It chose its path as it walked along. The brass hood on top of it moved from side to side. You could not help thinking of a head looking around. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a giant fisherman’s basket. Puffs of green smoke came out of the joints of its legs as it swept past me. And in a moment it was gone. That much I saw then. But I saw it all unclearly, because the lightning kept coming and going, in blinding light and deep black shadow. As it passed, it gave a loud, triumphant howl that was louder than the thunder—“Aloo! Aloo!” In another minute it was with its companion, half a mile away. They were bending over something in the field. I have no doubt about this Thing in the field. It was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from Mars. For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness. By the light of the flashes, I watched these huge metal beings. They were moving about in the distance, beyond the tops of the hedges. A thin hail was now beginning. As it came and went, their figures became misty and then flashed clear again. Now and then there was a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up. I was soaked with hail from above and with puddle water from below. I was so astonished that for some time I could do nothing. Then at last I struggled up the bank to a drier place. Only then did I start to think about the danger I was in. Not far from me was a little wooden hut with only one room. Around it was a patch of potato garden. At last I struggled to my feet. Bending low, and using every bit of cover I could find, I ran for this hut. I hammered at the door. But I could not make the people hear, if there were any people inside. After a time I stopped. For most of the way I used a ditch. In this way I managed to crawl into the pine woods towards Maybury. The huge machines did not see me. Under the cover of the trees I pushed on towards my own house. I was wet and shivering now. I walked among the trees and tried to find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood. The lightning was now coming less often. The hail was pouring down like a river. It fell in columns through the gaps in the thick leaves. I should have understood the meaning of all the things I had seen. If I had, I would have gone round at once through Byfleet to Street Cobham. Then I would have gone back to my wife at Leatherhead. But that night the strangeness of things around me stopped me, and so did my own misery. I was hurt and tired and wet to the skin. The storm had deafened and blinded me. I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was all the reason I had. I stumbled through the trees. I fell into a ditch and hurt my knees on a plank. Finally I splashed out into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say “splashed”, because the storm water was washing the sand down the hill in a muddy river. There in the darkness a man ran into me and sent me staggering back. He gave a cry of terror, jumped sideways and rushed on. I could not collect my thoughts quickly enough to speak to him. The storm was so strong just here that I had a hard struggle to get up the hill. I kept close to the fence on the left and worked my way along its posts. Near the top I stumbled on something soft. By a flash of lightning I saw a heap of black cloth and a pair of boots between my feet. Before I could see clearly how the man lay, the flicker of light had passed. I stood over him and waited for the next flash. When it came, I saw that he was a strong, heavy man. His clothes were cheap but not old and worn. His head was bent under his body. He lay crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been thrown violently against it. I had never touched a dead body before, and I felt a natural disgust. But I overcame it. I bent down and turned him over to feel for his heart. He was quite dead. It seemed that his neck had been broken. The lightning flashed for the third time, and his face jumped out at me. I sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog. I had taken his horse and cart. I stepped over him carefully and pushed on up the hill. I made my way past the police station and the College Arms towards my own house. Nothing was burning on the hillside. But from the common there still came a red glare. Rolling clouds of reddish smoke rose up against the pouring hail. As far as I could see by the flashes, the houses around me were mostly not damaged. By the College Arms a dark heap lay in the road. Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet. But I did not have the courage to shout or to go to them. I let myself in with my key. I closed, locked and bolted the door. I staggered to the foot of the stairs and sat down. My mind was full of those walking metal monsters, and of the dead body smashed against the fence. I crouched at the foot of the stairs with my back to the wall, shivering violently. ### Glossary - **meadow**: a field of grass and wild flowers - **war fever**: a wild excitement about war that spreads among people - **hail**: small balls of ice that fall from the sky like rain - **tripod**: a stand with three legs - **milking stool**: a small seat with three legs, used when milking a cow - **shafts**: the two long poles that join a horse to a cart - **furze**: a wild bush with sharp points and yellow flowers - **tentacle**: a long, soft arm, like the arm of an octopus - **hood**: the top part of a fighting-machine, where the Martian sits - **landlord**: the man who owns or keeps an inn or pub ## XI. At the Window I have already said that my storms of feeling have a habit of wearing themselves out. After a time I noticed that I was cold and wet. There were little pools of water around me on the stair carpet. I got up almost without thinking and went into the dining room. I drank some whisky, and then I felt I should change my clothes. After I had done that, I went upstairs to my study. I do not know why I did so. The window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this window had been left open. The passage was dark. Next to the bright picture in the window frame, the side of the room seemed completely black. I stopped suddenly in the doorway. The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees around it had gone. Very far away, lit by a bright red glare, I could see the common around the sand-pits. Across the light, huge black shapes, strange and unnatural, moved busily to and fro. It really seemed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire. There was a wide hillside covered with tiny tongues of flame. They swayed and twisted in the gusts of the dying storm. They threw a red light on the low clouds that raced above. Every now and then, smoke from some nearer fire blew across the window and hid the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing. I could not see their exact shape. And I could not make out the black objects they were working on. I could not see the nearer fire either, but its light danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp smell of burning pine was in the air. I closed the door without a sound and crept towards the window. As I did so, the view grew wider. On one side it reached to the houses around Woking station. On the other side it reached to the burnt, black pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the arch. Several of the houses along the Maybury road were glowing ruins. So were several in the streets near the station. At first the light on the railway puzzled me. There was a black heap and a bright glare. To the right of that was a row of yellow oblongs. Then I understood that this was a wrecked train. The front part was smashed and on fire. The carriages at the back were still on the rails. There were three main centres of light: the houses, the train, and the burning country towards Chobham. Between them lay uneven patches of dark country. Here and there were stretches of ground that glowed dimly and smoked. That black land set with fire was the strangest sight. More than anything else, it reminded me of the Potteries at night. At first I could not see any people at all, although I looked hard for them. Later, against the light of Woking station, I saw a number of black figures. They were hurrying across the railway line, one after the other. And this fiery chaos was the little world where I had lived safely for years! I still did not know what had happened in the last seven hours. I was beginning to guess how these giant machines were connected to the slow lumps from the cylinder. But I did not know it yet. I felt a strange, cool interest, as if none of this concerned me. I turned my desk chair to the window and sat down. I stared at the blackened country. Most of all, I stared at the three huge black things. They were moving to and fro in the glare around the sand-pits. They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be. Were they machines that could think? I felt that such a thing was impossible. Or did a Martian sit inside each one? Perhaps it ruled and directed and used the machine, as a man’s brain rules his body. I began to compare the things to human machines. For the first time in my life I asked myself a question. How would an ironclad or a steam engine seem to an intelligent lower animal? The storm had left the sky clear. Over the smoke of the burning land, the little fading point of Mars was sinking into the west. Just then a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the fence. I woke myself from the heavy tiredness that had fallen on me. I looked down and saw him dimly, climbing over the fence. At the sight of another human being, my tiredness passed. I leaned out of the window eagerly. “Hist!” I said, in a whisper. He stopped, sitting on top of the fence, unsure. Then he came over and across the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent low and stepped softly. “Who’s there?” he said. He was whispering too, standing under the window and looking up. “Where are you going?” I asked. “God knows.” “Are you trying to hide?” “That’s it.” “Come into the house,” I said. I went down, unlocked the door and let him in. Then I locked the door again. I could not see his face. He had no hat, and his coat was unbuttoned. “My God!” he said, as I pulled him in. “What has happened?” I asked. “What hasn’t?” In the darkness I could see him make a hopeless movement with his hand. “They wiped us out—simply wiped us out,” he repeated, again and again. He followed me, almost without thinking, into the dining room. “Take some whisky,” I said, and I poured him a large glass. He drank it. Then suddenly he sat down at the table and put his head on his arms. He began to sob and cry like a little boy, completely overcome by his feelings. Strangely, I forgot my own despair of a short time before. I stood beside him, wondering. It was a long time before he was calm enough to answer my questions. Even then his answers were broken and confusing. He was a driver in the artillery. His gun had only come into action at about seven o’clock. At that time there was firing across the common. People said that the first group of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder. They were hiding under a metal shield. Later this shield rose up unsteadily on tripod legs. It became the first of the fighting-machines that I had seen. The gun he drove had been made ready to fire near Horsell, so that it could cover the sand-pits. In fact, it was the arrival of this gun that had started the battle. The limber gunners went to the back. As they did, his horse stepped in a rabbit hole and fell. It threw him into a dip in the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded behind him, and the ammunition blew up. There was fire all around him. He found himself lying under a heap of burnt dead men and dead horses. “I lay still,” he said, “scared out of my wits, with the front part of a horse on top of me. We’d been wiped out. And the smell—good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back when the horse fell, and I had to lie there until I felt better. Just like a parade it had been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!” “Wiped out!” he said. He had hidden under the dead horse for a long time. He secretly looked out across the common. The Cardigan men had tried to rush at the pit, spread out in a loose line. They were simply wiped out of existence. Then the monster had risen to its feet. It began to walk slowly to and fro across the common among the few people who were running away. Its hood turned about exactly like the head of a man in a hooded cloak. A kind of arm carried a complicated metal case. Green flashes sparkled around it. And out of the funnel of this case came the Heat-Ray, smoking. In a few minutes, as far as the soldier could see, nothing was left alive on the common. Some bushes and trees were already black skeletons. Every other bush and tree on it was burning. The hussars had been on the road beyond the curve of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. He heard the Maxims rattle for a time, and then they went quiet. The giant left Woking station and its group of houses until last. Then, in a moment, the Heat-Ray was turned on them. The town became a heap of burning ruins. Then the Thing shut off the Heat-Ray and turned its back on the artilleryman. It began to walk clumsily away towards the smoking pine woods. The second cylinder lay hidden there. As it did so, a second shining giant built itself up out of the pit. The second monster followed the first. At that, the artilleryman began to crawl very carefully across the hot heather ash towards Horsell. He managed to reach the ditch by the side of the road alive, and so he escaped to Woking. At this point his story turned into short, broken cries. It was impossible to get through the town. It seems that there were a few people alive there. Most of them were wild with fear, and many were burned and scalded. The fire forced him to turn aside. One of the Martian giants came back. He hid from it among some heaps of broken wall that were almost burning hot. He saw this giant chase a man. It caught him up in one of its steel tentacles. Then it knocked his head against the trunk of a pine tree. At last, after dark, the artilleryman made a run for it. He got over the railway embankment. Since then he had been creeping along secretly towards Maybury. He hoped to get out of danger by going towards London. People were hiding in trenches and cellars. Many of the survivors had gone away towards Woking village and Send. He had been dying of thirst. Then he found that one of the water pipes near the railway arch was smashed. The water was bubbling out onto the road like a spring. That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer as he told it and tried to make me see the things he had seen. Early in his story, he told me that he had eaten nothing since midday. I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp, because we were afraid of attracting the Martians. Every now and then our hands touched on the bread or meat. As he talked, the things around us slowly came out of the darkness. The trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window became clear. It seemed that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to see his face. It was blackened, thin and worn, as no doubt mine was too. When we had finished eating, we went quietly upstairs to my study. I looked out of the open window again. In one night the valley had become a valley of ashes. The fires were smaller now. Where there had been flames, there were now streams of smoke. The night had hidden countless ruins of smashed and burnt-out houses, and blasted, blackened trees. Now they stood out bare and terrible in the cruel light of dawn. Yet here and there some object had been lucky enough to escape. There was a white railway signal here, and the end of a greenhouse there. They looked white and fresh among the wreckage. Never before in the history of war had destruction been so complete. It had struck everything, without choosing. And three of the metal giants stood around the pit, shining in the growing light from the east. Their hoods were turning, as though they were looking over the ruin they had made. It seemed to me that the pit had been made bigger. Again and again, puffs of bright green vapour streamed up out of it towards the brightening dawn. They streamed up, whirled, broke and vanished. Beyond were the pillars of fire around Chobham. At the first touch of day they became pillars of blood-red smoke. ### Glossary - **chaos**: complete confusion and disorder - **the Potteries**: an area of England with many factories whose fires glowed at night - **ironclad**: a warship covered with iron - **artillery**: big guns; the part of the army that uses them - **limber gunners**: soldiers who look after the cart that pulls a big gun and carries its shells - **ammunition**: bullets and shells for guns - **hood**: the top part of a fighting-machine, where the Martian sits - **embankment**: a long wall of earth that carries a railway or road - **pantry**: a small room for storing food - **vapour**: a kind of gas or mist that rises into the air ## XII. What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton As the dawn grew brighter, we moved away from the window where we had watched the Martians. We went very quietly downstairs. The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in. He said that he planned to make his way towards London. From there he would join his battery again—No. 12, of the Horse Artillery. My plan was to go back to Leatherhead at once. The strength of the Martians had made a great impression on me. So I had decided to take my wife to Newhaven and leave the country with her straight away. I could already see clearly what was coming. Before such creatures could be destroyed, there must be a terrible struggle in the country around London. But between us and Leatherhead lay the third cylinder, with its giants guarding it. If I had been alone, I think I would have taken my chance. I would have gone straight across country. But the artilleryman talked me out of it. “It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife,” he said, “to make her a widow.” In the end I agreed to go with him. We would keep under the cover of the woods and go north as far as Street Cobham. There I would leave him. From there I would go a long way round by Epsom to reach Leatherhead. I would have started at once, but my companion had been a soldier in real fighting. He knew better than that. He made me search the house for a flask, and he filled it with whisky. We filled every pocket we had with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. Then we crept out of the house. We ran as fast as we could down the rough road I had come up the night before. The houses seemed empty. In the road lay three burnt bodies close together. The Heat-Ray had struck them dead. Here and there were things that people had dropped. There was a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon and other poor treasures like these. At the corner where the road turns up towards the post office, there was a little cart. It was full of boxes and furniture. It had no horse, and it leaned over on a broken wheel. A cash box had been smashed open in a hurry and thrown under the wreckage. Here, none of the houses had been badly damaged, except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire. The Heat-Ray had cut off the tops of the chimneys and passed on. Yet apart from us, there did not seem to be a living soul on Maybury Hill. I suppose most of the people had escaped by the Old Woking road. That was the road I had taken when I drove to Leatherhead. Or perhaps they had hidden. We went down the lane, past the body of the man in black. He was soaked now from the hail of the night before. We pushed our way into the woods at the foot of the hill. We went through them towards the railway without meeting anyone. Across the railway line, the woods were only scarred and blackened ruins of woods. Most of the trees had fallen. But some still stood, with sad grey trunks and dark brown leaves instead of green. On our side, the fire had only burnt the nearest trees. It had not managed to take hold. In one place the woodmen had been working on Saturday. Trees that had been cut down and freshly trimmed lay in a clearing. There were heaps of sawdust by the sawing-machine and its engine. Close by was a hut that the workmen had used, now empty. There was not a breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still. Even the birds were silent. As we hurried along, the artilleryman and I talked in whispers. Now and again we looked over our shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen. After a time we came near the road. As we did so, we heard the clatter of hoofs. Through the tree trunks we saw three soldiers on horses, riding slowly towards Woking. We called to them, and they stopped while we hurried towards them. It was a lieutenant and two privates of the 8th Hussars. They had a stand like a theodolite. The artilleryman told me that it was a heliograph. “You are the first men I’ve seen coming this way this morning,” said the lieutenant. “What’s going on?” His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared with curiosity. The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and saluted. “Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying to rejoin battery, sir. You’ll come in sight of the Martians, I expect, about half a mile along this road.” “What the dickens are they like?” asked the lieutenant. “Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like ’luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir.” “Get out!” said the lieutenant. “What stupid nonsense!” “You’ll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire and strikes you dead.” “What d’ye mean—a gun?” “No, sir,” said the artilleryman, and he began to describe the Heat-Ray very clearly. Halfway through, the lieutenant stopped 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.” He turned to the artilleryman. “Look here, we’ve been ordered to clear people out of their houses here. You’d better go along and report to Brigadier-General Marvin. Tell him all you know. He’s at Weybridge. Know the way?” “I do,” I said. And he turned his horse south again. “Half a mile, you say?” he said. “At most,” I answered, and I pointed south over the treetops. He thanked me and rode on, and we never saw them again. Further along we came upon three women and two children in the road. They were busy clearing out a farm worker’s cottage. They had found a little hand cart and were piling it up with dirty-looking bundles and shabby furniture. They were all much too busy to talk to us as we passed. Near Byfleet station we came out of the pine trees. We found the country calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight. We were far out of reach of the Heat-Ray there. Some of the houses were silent and empty. In others people were busy packing. A group of soldiers stood on the bridge over the railway, staring down the line towards Woking. Without these signs, the day would have seemed very much like any other Sunday. Several farm waggons and carts were creaking along the road to Addlestone. Suddenly, through the gate of a field, we saw six twelve-pounders. They stood across a stretch of flat meadow, neatly spaced, pointing towards Woking. The gunners stood by the guns, waiting. The ammunition waggons stood at a careful, sensible distance. The men stood almost as if an officer were inspecting them. “That’s good!” I said. “They will get one fair shot, at any rate.” The artilleryman stopped at the gate, unsure. “I shall go on,” he said. Further on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a number of men in white work jackets. They were building a long wall of earth, and there were more guns behind it. “It’s bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow,” said the artilleryman. “They ’aven’t seen that fire-beam yet.” The officers who were not busy stood and stared south-west over the treetops. The men who were digging stopped every now and again to stare in the same direction. Byfleet was in an uproar. People were packing. About twenty hussars were hurrying them on. Some of the soldiers were on foot, and some were on horseback. Three or four black government waggons with crosses in white circles were being loaded in the village street. So was an old bus, among other vehicles. There were crowds of people. Since it was Sunday, most of them had put on their best clothes. The soldiers were having great difficulty in making them understand how serious their position was. We saw a little old man with a wrinkled face. He had a huge box and twenty or more flower pots with orchids in them. He was arguing angrily with the corporal, who wanted to leave them behind. I stopped and took hold of his arm. “Do you know what’s over there?” I said. I pointed at the tops of the pines that hid the Martians. “Eh?” he said, turning. “I was explainin’ these is vallyble.” “Death!” I shouted. “Death is coming! Death!” I left him to think about that, if he could, and I hurried on after the artilleryman. At the corner I looked back. The soldier had left him. He was still standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on its lid. He was staring vaguely over the trees. No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were. The whole place was in a confusion that I had never seen in any town before. There were carts and carriages everywhere, the most astonishing mixture of vehicles and horses. The respectable people of the town were packing. There were men in golf and boating clothes, and wives who were prettily dressed. Men who usually hung about by the river were busily helping. The children were excited. Most of them were very pleased with this astonishing change to their usual Sunday. In the middle of it all, the good vicar was bravely holding an early celebration. His bell was jangling out above all the excitement. The artilleryman and I sat on the step of the drinking fountain. We made quite a good meal from the food we had brought with us. Groups of soldiers were going round, warning people. Here they were no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white. They told people to leave now, or to hide in their cellars as soon as the firing began. As we crossed the railway bridge, we saw a growing crowd in and around the railway station. The crowded platform was piled with boxes and packages. I believe the ordinary trains had been stopped, so that troops and guns could get through to Chertsey. Later, special trains were put on. I have heard since that there was a savage fight for places on them. We stayed at Weybridge until midday. At that hour we found ourselves near Shepperton Lock, at the place where the Wey and the Thames join. We spent part of the time helping two old women to pack a little cart. The Wey has three mouths here. At this point you can hire boats, and there was a ferry across the river. On the Shepperton side there was an inn with a lawn. Beyond that, the tower of Shepperton Church rose above the trees. It has since been replaced by a spire. Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of people running away. The flight had not yet turned into a panic. But there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could carry across. People came along out of breath, carrying heavy loads. One husband and wife were even carrying a small door from an outhouse between them. Some of their household things were piled on it. One man told us that he meant to try to get away from Shepperton station. There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even making jokes. People here seemed to think that the Martians were simply dangerous human beings. They might attack the town and rob it, but they would certainly be destroyed in the end. Every now and then people looked nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey. But everything over there was still. Across the Thames everything was quiet, except just where the boats landed. It was a sharp contrast with the Surrey side. The people who landed there from the boats went walking off down the lane. The big ferryboat had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn. They stared at the people who were running away and made jokes about them. They did not offer to help. The inn was closed, because by law it could not open at that hour on a Sunday. “What’s that?” cried a boatman. “Shut up, you fool!” said a man near me to a barking dog. Then the sound came again, this time from the direction of Chertsey. It was a dull thud—the sound of a gun. The fighting was beginning. Almost at once, some batteries across the river to our right joined in. We could not see them because of the trees. They fired heavily, one after the other. A woman screamed. Everyone stood frozen by the sudden noise of battle. It was near us, but we could not see it. There was nothing to see except flat meadows, and cows that mostly went on calmly eating. There were silvery willow trees with cut-back tops, standing still in the warm sunlight. “The sojers’ll stop ’em,” said a woman beside me, without much hope. A haze rose over the treetops. Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river. It was a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung there. At once the ground shook under our feet. A heavy explosion shook the air. It smashed two or three windows in the houses nearby, and it left us astonished. “Here they are!” shouted a man in a blue jersey. “Over there! D’yer see them? Over there!” Quickly, one after the other, the armoured Martians appeared: one, two, three, four. They were far away, beyond the little trees, across the flat meadows that stretched towards Chertsey. They were striding fast towards the river. At first they seemed like little figures in hoods. They moved with a rolling motion and were as fast as flying birds. Then a fifth one came towards us at an angle. Their armoured bodies shone in the sun as they swept quickly forward towards the guns. They grew bigger and bigger as they came nearer. One on the far left, the one furthest away, waved a huge case high in the air. Then the ghostly, terrible Heat-Ray struck out towards Chertsey and hit the town. I had already seen that Ray on Friday night. These creatures were so strange, so fast and so terrible. When they saw them, the crowd near the water’s edge seemed to freeze with horror for a moment. There was no screaming or shouting, but a silence. Then there was a low murmur and a movement of feet. There was a splashing from the water. A man was carrying a travelling bag on his shoulder. He was too frightened to drop it. He swung round, and the corner of his bag hit me and sent me staggering. A woman pushed me with her hand and rushed past me. I turned with the rush of people. But I was not too frightened to think. The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind. Get under water! That was it! “Get under water!” I shouted. But nobody listened. I turned round again and rushed towards the Martian that was coming nearer. I rushed right down the gravel beach and straight into the water. Others did the same. A boatload of people was coming back to the shore. They came jumping out as I rushed past. The stones under my feet were muddy and slippery. The river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet, hardly waist-deep. The Martian was now high above me, hardly two hundred yards away. Then I threw myself forward under the water. People from the boats were jumping into the river. Their splashes sounded like thunder in my ears. People were landing in a hurry on both sides of the river. But for the moment, the Martian machine took no notice of the people running this way and that. Imagine a man who has kicked an ants’ nest with his foot. He takes no more notice of the confused ants than it took of us. I was half choking when I lifted my head above the water. The Martian’s hood was pointing at the batteries that were still firing across the river. As it came forward, it swung something loose. It must have been the machine that made the Heat-Ray. In another moment it was on the bank. With one stride it was wading halfway across. The knees of its front legs bent at the far bank. In another moment it had lifted itself to its full height again, close to the village of Shepperton. At once six guns fired together. They had been hidden behind the edge of that village, and nobody on our bank had known about them. The sudden, close shock of the explosions, one right after another, made my heart jump. The monster was already lifting the case that made the Heat-Ray. Just then the first shell burst six yards above the hood. I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw nothing and thought nothing of the other four Martians. My attention was fixed on what was happening near me. At the same moment two other shells burst in the air near the body. The hood twisted round. It was in time to meet the fourth shell, but not in time to avoid it. The shell burst right in the face of the Thing. The hood swelled, flashed, and was thrown off in a dozen torn pieces of red flesh and shining metal. “Hit!” I shouted. It was something between a scream and a cheer. I heard answering shouts from the people in the water around me. In that moment of joy I could have jumped right out of the water. The machine had lost its head, and it staggered like a drunken giant. But it did not fall over. By a miracle it got its balance back. It no longer watched where it stepped. The camera that fired the Heat-Ray was now held stiffly up. It staggered quickly towards Shepperton. The living mind inside the hood was dead. The Martian had been killed and scattered to the four winds. The Thing was now just a complicated metal machine, rushing to its own destruction. It drove along in a straight line, and nothing was steering it. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church. It smashed the tower down, as a battering ram might have done. It swung to one side, stumbled on, and fell with huge force into the river, out of my sight. A violent explosion shook the air. A great spout of water, steam, mud and broken metal shot far up into the sky. When the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the water, the water turned into steam at once. In another moment a huge wave came sweeping round the bend from upstream. It was like the muddy wave that rushes up some rivers with the tide, but it was almost burning hot. I saw people struggling towards the shore. I heard their screams and shouts faintly above the boiling and roaring of the fallen Martian. For a moment I took no notice of the heat. I forgot that I clearly needed to save myself. I splashed through the wild water until I could see round the bend. I pushed aside a man in black to do so. Half a dozen empty boats were tossing about without purpose on the confused waves. Downstream I could see the fallen Martian. It was lying across the river, and most of it was under the water. Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage. Through the whirling clouds I could see the giant legs, now and then and unclearly. They were churning the water and throwing mud and foam into the air. The tentacles swung and struck like living arms. These movements were helpless and had no purpose. But apart from that, it looked like some wounded creature fighting for its life in the waves. Huge amounts of a reddish-brown liquid were spurting out of the machine in noisy jets. Then my attention was pulled away from this dying struggle by a furious yelling. It sounded like the factory sirens in our industrial towns. A man was standing knee-deep near the towing path. He shouted to me, but I could not hear him, and he pointed. I looked back. I saw the other Martians coming down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey with giant strides. The Shepperton guns fired again, but this time it did no good. At that, I ducked under the water at once. I held my breath until it was agony to move. I struggled painfully forward under the water for as long as I could. The water was wild all around me, and it was quickly getting hotter. For a moment I lifted my head to take a breath. I threw the hair and water out of my eyes. The steam was rising in a whirling white fog. At first it hid the Martians completely. The noise was deafening. Then I saw them dimly. They were huge grey figures, and the mist made them look even bigger. They had passed me. Two of them were bending over the foaming, wild ruins of their companion. The third and fourth stood beside him in the water. One was perhaps two hundred yards from me, and the other was towards Laleham. The machines that made the Heat-Rays waved high in the air. The hissing beams struck down this way and that. The air was full of sound, a deafening, confusing mixture of noises. There was the loud metal clanging of the Martians and the crash of falling houses. There was the thud of trees, fences and sheds as they burst into flame. And there was the crackling and roaring of fire. Thick black smoke was leaping up to mix with the steam from the river. The Heat-Ray went to and fro over Weybridge. Wherever it struck, there were flashes of bright white light. These changed at once into a smoky dance of wild red flames. The nearer houses were still standing, waiting for their fate. They looked shadowy, faint and pale in the steam, with the fire moving to and fro behind them. For a moment perhaps I stood there, up to my chest in the almost boiling water. I was too shocked by my position to move. I had no hope of escape. Through the smoke I could see the people who had been with me in the river. Some were scrambling out of the water through the reeds. They were like little frogs that hurry through the grass when a man comes near. Others were running to and fro on the towing path in complete terror. Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping towards me. The houses fell in as they melted at its touch, and flames shot out of them. The trees turned to fire with a roar. The Ray flickered up and down the towing path. It licked away the people who were running this way and that. It came down to the water’s edge not fifty yards from where I stood. It swept across the river to Shepperton. Where it passed, the water rose up in a boiling line, with steam on top. I turned towards the shore. In another moment the huge wave rushed upon me. It was nearly at boiling point. I screamed aloud. I was scalded and half blind, and in terrible pain. I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. If my foot had slipped, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, on the wide, bare strip of gravel. It runs down to mark the corner where the Wey and the Thames meet. I expected nothing but death. I have a dim memory of a Martian’s foot coming down within twenty yards of my head. It drove straight into the loose gravel, threw it this way and that, and lifted again. I remember a long wait of terrible suspense. And then I remember the four of them carrying the wreckage of their companion between them. Sometimes they were clear, and then they grew faint behind a veil of smoke. They seemed to take forever to move away across a wide stretch of river and meadow. And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle I had escaped. ### Glossary - **battery**: a group of big guns and the soldiers who use them - **widow**: a woman whose husband has died - **flask**: a small flat bottle for carrying a drink in your pocket - **heliograph**: a machine that sends signals with flashes of sunlight on a mirror - **theodolite**: an instrument on three legs that is used to measure land - **twelve-pounder**: a type of big gun used by the army - **orchid**: a beautiful and expensive flower - **early celebration**: an early morning church service with bread and wine - **grenadier**: a soldier who fights on foot - **towing path**: a path along a river, once used by horses that pulled boats - **battering ram**: a heavy log used in old wars to break down walls and gates - **scalded**: burned by very hot water or steam ## XIII. How I Fell in with the Curate The Martians had suddenly learned how powerful our earthly weapons were. After this lesson they went back to their first position on Horsell Common. They were in a hurry, and they had to carry the broken pieces of their smashed companion. So they no doubt missed many unimportant victims like me. They could have left their comrade and pushed on at once. At that time there was nothing between them and London except batteries of twelve-pounder guns. They would certainly have reached the capital before the news of their coming. Their arrival would have been as sudden, terrible and destructive as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago. But they were in no hurry. One cylinder followed another on its flight between the planets. Every twenty-four hours brought them more help. And meanwhile the army and the navy understood at last how powerful their enemies were. They worked with furious energy. Every minute a new gun came into position. Before twilight a black gun barrel was hiding in every small wood. It waited in every row of houses on the hills around Kingston and Richmond. A burned and empty area lay all around the Martian camp on Horsell Common. It was perhaps twenty square miles altogether. Brave scouts crawled through it with their heliographs. They crawled through burned and ruined villages among the green trees. They crawled through black and smoking spaces that had been pine woods only a day before. Soon they would warn the gunners when the Martians came. But the Martians now understood that we had artillery. They knew that it was dangerous to let men come near. No man could go within a mile of either cylinder unless he paid with his life. It seems that these giants spent the early part of the afternoon going backwards and forwards. They carried everything from the second and third cylinders to their first pit on Horsell Common. The second was in Addlestone Golf Links, and the third was at Pyrford. Black heather and ruined buildings stretched far and wide around the pit. One of the Martians stood over it as a sentinel. The rest left their huge fighting-machines and went down into the pit. They worked hard there until late into the night. A tall pillar of thick green smoke rose from it. People could see it from the hills around Merrow. It is said that they could even see it from Banstead and Epsom Downs. So the Martians behind me were getting ready for their next attack. In front of me, mankind was gathering for the battle. And meanwhile I was making my way towards London. I struggled with great pain and effort away from the fire and smoke of burning Weybridge. I saw an empty boat far away, very small, floating down the river. I threw off most of my wet clothes, and I went after it. I reached it, and so I escaped from that destruction. There were no oars in the boat. But I managed to paddle with my hands, though they were badly scalded. I went down the river towards Halliford and Walton. It was very slow, and I kept looking behind me, as you can well understand. I followed the river because I thought the water was my best chance. I could escape there if these giants came back. The hot water from the fallen Martian floated down the river with me. So for most of a mile I could see little of either bank. Once, however, I saw a line of black figures. They were hurrying across the meadows from the direction of Weybridge. Halliford seemed to be empty, and several of the houses facing the river were on fire. It was strange to see the place so quiet and so lonely under the hot blue sky. The smoke and little threads of flame went straight up into the heat of the afternoon. I had never before seen houses burning without a crowd of people getting in the way. A little farther on, the dry reeds on the bank were smoking and glowing. Further inland, a line of fire was moving steadily across a late field of hay. For a long time I just floated. I was in great pain and very tired after all the violence. And the heat on the water was terrible. Then my fears grew stronger again, and I started paddling once more. The sun burned my bare back. At last the bridge at Walton came into sight round the bend in the river. By then my fever and weakness were stronger than my fears. I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down in the long grass. I felt deadly sick. I suppose it was then about four or five o’clock. Soon I got up and walked perhaps half a mile without meeting anyone. Then I lay down again in the shade of a hedge. I seem to remember that I talked to myself, in a confused way, during that last part. I was also very thirsty. I bitterly regretted that I had not drunk more water. It is a strange thing, but I felt angry with my wife. I cannot explain it. But I wanted very much to reach Leatherhead, and I could not. That worried me terribly. I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so I probably fell asleep. Then I noticed him. He was sitting near me in shirt sleeves dirty with soot. His clean-shaven face was turned up to the sky. He was staring at a faint flickering light that danced across it. The sky was what people call a mackerel sky. There were rows and rows of thin, soft, feathery clouds. They were lightly coloured by the midsummer sunset. I sat up. He heard me move, and he looked at me quickly. “Have you any water?” I asked suddenly. He shook his head. “You have been asking for water for the last hour,” he said. For a moment we were silent. We were looking at each other and making up our minds about each other. I dare say he thought I looked strange enough. I was naked except for my wet trousers and socks. I was scalded, and my face and shoulders were black with smoke. His face was fair and weak, and his chin went back. His hair lay in crisp curls on his low forehead, and it was almost the colour of pale straw. His eyes were rather large and pale blue, and they stared without any expression. He spoke suddenly, and he looked away from me with an empty face. “What does it mean?” he said. “What do these things mean?” I stared at him and did not answer. He held out a thin white hand. He spoke almost as if he were complaining. “Why are these things allowed? What sins have we done? The morning service was over. I was walking through the roads to clear my head for the afternoon. And then—fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work is undone, all the work—— What are these Martians?” “What are we?” I answered, and I cleared my throat. He held his knees tightly and turned to look at me again. For half a minute, perhaps, he stared at me in silence. “I was walking through the roads to clear my head,” he said. “And suddenly—fire, earthquake, death!” He fell silent again. His chin had now sunk almost to his knees. After a while he began to wave his hand. “All the work—all the Sunday schools—What have we done—what has Weybridge done? Everything is gone—everything is destroyed. The church! We rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept away completely! Why?” There was another pause. Then he burst out again like a madman. “The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!” he shouted. His eyes burned, and he pointed a thin finger in the direction of Weybridge. By this time I was beginning to understand what kind of man he was. He had clearly run away from Weybridge. He had been caught up in a terrible tragedy. It had driven him to the very edge of madness. “Are we far from Sunbury?” I said in a calm, practical voice. “What are we to do?” he asked. “Are these creatures everywhere? Has the earth been given to them?” “Are we far from Sunbury?” “Only this morning I led the early Holy Communion service——” “Things have changed,” I said quietly. “You must keep calm. There is still hope.” “Hope!” “Yes. Plenty of hope—in spite of all this destruction!” I began to explain my view of our situation. He listened at first. A little interest came into his eyes. But as I went on, his empty stare came back, and he looked away from me. “This must be the beginning of the end,” he said, and he interrupted me. “The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall call to the mountains and the rocks to fall on them and hide them! Hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!” I began to understand the situation. I stopped my careful explanation and struggled to my feet. I stood over him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Be a man!” I said. “You are mad with fear! What good is religion if it breaks down when disaster comes? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes have done to men before! Did you think God had made Weybridge safe from all that? He is not an insurance agent.” For a time he sat in silence with an empty face. “But how can we escape?” he asked suddenly. “Nothing can hurt them, and they have no pity.” “They can be hurt,” I answered. “And perhaps they are not without pity. The stronger they are, the more sensible and careful we should be. One of them was killed over there less than three hours ago.” “Killed!” he said, and he stared about him. “How can God’s servants be killed?” “I saw it happen.” And I told him about it. “We happened to be in the worst of it,” I said, “and that is all.” “What is that flicker in the sky?” he asked suddenly. I told him that it was the heliograph sending signals. It was a sign of human help and effort in the sky. “We are in the middle of it,” I said, “though it is quiet here. That flicker in the sky tells us that a storm is gathering. Over there, I think, are the Martians. And towards London, the hills rise around Richmond and Kingston, and the trees give cover. There men are building earth walls and placing guns. Soon the Martians will be coming this way again.” And even as I spoke, he jumped to his feet and stopped me with a sign of his hand. “Listen!” he said. From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull sound of distant guns. There was also a strange crying far away. Then everything was still. A beetle came flying over the hedge and past us with a low hum. High in the west hung the thin curve of the young moon, faint and pale. It hung above the smoke of Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot, still beauty of the sunset. “We had better follow this path,” I said, “northward.” ### Glossary - **twelve-pounder guns**: a type of big field gun used by the army - **batteries**: groups of big guns and the soldiers who use them - **heliographs**: machines that send signals with flashes of sunlight on a mirror - **sentinel**: a guard who watches - **scalded**: badly burned by very hot water or steam - **mackerel sky**: a sky with many rows of small, thin clouds, like the pattern on a mackerel fish - **soot**: black powder left by smoke and fire - **curate**: an assistant priest in a church - **Sodom and Gomorrah**: two cities in the Bible that God destroyed with fire - **goeth up for ever and ever**: an old way of saying "goes up for ever"; words from the Bible - **sitteth upon the throne**: an old way of saying "sits on the throne"; words from the Bible about God - **insurance agent**: a person who sells protection against loss or damage, for money ## XIV. In London My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. He was a medical student, and he was working for an examination that was coming soon. He heard nothing of their arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers on Saturday had long special articles about the planet Mars and about life on the planets. They also had a short telegram with very unclear words. Because it was so short, people noticed it all the more. The story said that a crowd had come near the Martians. This had frightened them, and they had killed a number of people with a quick-firing gun. The telegram ended with these words: “The Martians seem to be terrible. But they have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen. In fact, they seem unable to do so. This is probably because the earth’s gravity is stronger than that of Mars.” The newspaper’s main writer wrote more about this last point, in a very comforting way. My brother went to his biology class at the crammer’s that day. Of course all the students there were very interested. But there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers printed bits of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell except the movements of troops around the common. They also reported the burning of the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge. That was all until eight o’clock. Then the *St. James’s Gazette* printed an extra-special edition. It reported the simple fact that the telegraph lines were cut. People thought that burning pine trees had fallen across the line. Nothing more about the fighting was known that night. It was the night of my drive to Leatherhead and back. My brother did not feel worried about us. He knew from the papers that the cylinder was a good two miles from my house. He decided to come down to me that night. He wanted, as he says, to see the Things before they were killed. He sent me a telegram at about four o’clock, but it never reached me. Then he spent the evening at a music hall. There was a thunderstorm in London on Saturday night too, and my brother took a cab to Waterloo. He went to the platform where the midnight train usually started. After some waiting, he learned that there had been an accident. Because of it, no trains could reach Woking that night. He could not find out what kind of accident it was. In fact, the railway managers themselves did not clearly know at that time. There was very little excitement in the station. The officials thought it was only a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction. The theatre trains usually went through Woking. So they were sending them round by Virginia Water or Guildford instead. They were also busy changing the route of the Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League trips. A newspaper reporter who worked at night thought my brother was the traffic manager. My brother looks a little like him. The reporter stopped him and tried to interview him. Very few people, apart from the railway officials, connected the breakdown with the Martians. I have read another account of these events. It says that on Sunday morning “all London was electrified by the news from Woking.” In fact, there was nothing to justify such an exaggerated phrase. Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning. Some people did read the hurried telegrams in the Sunday papers. But it took them some time to understand what those telegrams meant. And most people in London do not read Sunday papers. Also, Londoners are very used to feeling safe. And the papers are always full of shocking news. So people could read the following words without feeling any personal fear. This is what they read: “At about seven o’clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder. They moved about under an armour of metal shields. They have completely wrecked Woking station and the houses near it. They have killed an entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. Maxims have been completely useless against their armour. The Martians have put the field guns out of action. Hussars have been galloping fast into Chertsey. The Martians seem to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or Windsor. People in West Surrey are very worried. Earth walls are being built to stop the advance towards London.” That was how the *Sunday Sun* put it. The *Referee* also printed a clever “handbook” article very quickly. It compared the whole thing to a zoo of wild animals suddenly let loose in a village. No one in London knew for certain what the armoured Martians were like. People still firmly believed that these monsters must be slow. Words like “crawling” and “creeping painfully” appeared in almost all the early reports. None of the telegrams could have been written by someone who had seen them advance. The Sunday papers printed new editions as more news came in. Some even printed new editions when no news came in. But there was really nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon. Then the authorities gave the news agencies the information they had. It said that the people of Walton and Weybridge and the whole district were pouring along the roads towards London. That was all. In the morning my brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital. He still knew nothing of what had happened the night before. In church he heard people speak about the invasion, and there was a special prayer for peace. When he came out, he bought a *Referee*. The news in it alarmed him. So he went to Waterloo station again to find out if the line was open. There were buses, carriages, cyclists and countless people walking in their best clothes. The newsvendors were spreading the strange news, but these people hardly seemed to be affected. People were interested. If they were alarmed, they were alarmed only for the people who lived in that area. At the station my brother heard something new. The Windsor and Chertsey lines were now cut too. The porters said that some remarkable telegrams had come in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations. But then the telegrams had suddenly stopped. My brother could get very few exact details out of the porters. “There’s fighting going on about Weybridge” was all they knew. The train service was now in great disorder. Quite a lot of people were standing about the station. They were waiting for friends from places on the South-Western lines. One old gentleman with grey hair came up to my brother. He spoke very angrily about the South-Western Company. “It wants showing up,” he said. One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney and Kingston. They carried people who had gone out for a day’s boating on the river. They had found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and white blazer spoke to my brother. He was full of strange news. “There’s crowds of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things,” he said. “They’ve got boxes of valuables and all that. They come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton. They say there’s been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing. And they say mounted soldiers have told them to get away at once, because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder. What on earth does it all mean? The Martians can’t get out of their pit, can they?” My brother could not tell him. Later he found out that the feeling of alarm had spread to the people on the underground railway. People had gone out for Sunday trips to the green areas in the south-west. These were places like Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Kew. Now they began to come back at strangely early hours. But not one person had anything to tell except vague rumours. Everyone who worked at the station seemed bad-tempered. At about five o’clock the crowd in the station grew very excited. There is a railway line between the South-Eastern and the South-Western stations, and it is almost always closed. Now it was opened. Trucks carrying huge guns went past, and carriages packed with soldiers. These were the guns from Woolwich and Chatham. They had been brought up to protect Kingston. People in the crowd and the soldiers joked with each other. “You’ll get eaten!” someone called. “We’re the beast-tamers!” came the answer, and so on. A little later a group of police came into the station. They began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother went out into the street again. The church bells were ringing for evensong. A group of girls from the Salvation Army came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of idle men were watching a strange brown scum. It was floating down the river in patches. The sun was just setting. The Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against the most peaceful sky you can imagine. It was a sky of gold, with long stripes of reddish-purple cloud across it. People were talking about a dead body floating in the river. One of the men there said he was a reservist. He told my brother that he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west. In Wellington Street my brother met two strong, rough-looking men. They had just rushed out of Fleet Street with newspapers that were still wet and with big, shocking posters. “Terrible disaster!” they shouted to each other down Wellington Street. “Fighting at Weybridge! Full description! Martians driven back! London in Danger!” He had to pay threepence for a copy of that paper. Then, and only then, he understood something of the full power and terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not just a few small, slow creatures. They were minds that controlled huge mechanical bodies. They could move fast. And they could strike so hard that even the strongest guns could not stand against them. The paper described them as “huge machines like spiders, nearly a hundred feet high. They can move as fast as an express train, and they can shoot out a beam of terrible heat.” Hidden batteries had been placed in the country around Horsell Common. They were mostly field guns. Many had been placed between the Woking district and London. Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames. By a lucky chance one had been destroyed. In the other cases the shells had missed. Then the Heat-Rays had destroyed the batteries at once. The report spoke of heavy losses of soldiers, but its tone was hopeful. The Martians had been driven back, it said, so they could be hurt. They had gone back to their triangle of cylinders, in the area around Woking. Signallers with heliographs were moving towards them from all sides. Guns were being brought quickly from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot and Woolwich, and even from the north. Among them were long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen guns were in position or being placed in a hurry. Most of them were protecting London. Never before had England gathered so many weapons so quickly in one place. People were also making high explosives quickly and sending them out. With these, people hoped, any new cylinders that fell could be destroyed at once. The report said that the situation was certainly very strange and very serious. But it begged the public not to panic and to stop others from panicking. The Martians were, no doubt, extremely strange and terrible. But there could not be more than twenty of them at the very most, against our millions. The authorities had looked at the size of the cylinders. From this they believed that there could not be more than five Martians in each cylinder. That made fifteen altogether. And at least one was already dead, perhaps more. The public would be properly warned when danger came near. Careful plans were being made to protect the people in the south-western suburbs, which were in danger. The report said again and again that London was safe. It said that the authorities could deal with the problem. And so this sort of public announcement ended. All this was printed in enormous letters. The paper was so fresh that it was still wet. There had been no time to add a single word of comment. My brother said it was strange to see how the usual news had been cut out. It had been cut without pity to make room for this report. All down Wellington Street people were opening the pink pages and reading them. Suddenly the Strand was noisy with the voices of a whole army of newspaper sellers. They were following these first two men. Men jumped off buses to get copies. Whatever people had felt before, this news certainly excited them very much. My brother said that the shutters of a map shop in the Strand were being taken down. Inside the window he could see a man in his Sunday clothes. He was even wearing lemon-yellow gloves. He was quickly fixing maps of Surrey to the glass. My brother went on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square with the paper in his hand. There he saw some of the people who had run away from West Surrey. One man had his wife, two boys and some furniture in a cart like the ones greengrocers use. He was driving from the direction of Westminster Bridge. Close behind him came a hay waggon. In it were five or six respectable-looking people, with some boxes and bundles. The faces of these people were tired and full of worry. They looked very different from the people on the buses, who wore their best Sunday clothes. People in fashionable clothes looked out at them from cabs. The refugees stopped at the Square. They seemed unable to decide which way to go. At last they turned east along the Strand. Some way behind them came a man in work clothes. He was riding one of those old-fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. He was dirty, and his face was white. 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 that there were more police than usual directing the traffic. Some of the refugees were exchanging news with the people on the buses. One of them said that he had seen the Martians. “Boilers on stilts, I tell you, striding along like men.” Most of the refugees were excited and full of life because of their strange experience. Beyond Victoria the pubs were doing good business with these new arrivals. At every street corner groups of people were reading papers. They were talking excitedly or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors. The crowds seemed to grow as night came on. At last, my brother said, the roads were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My brother spoke to several of these refugees. Most of them gave him answers that told him nothing useful. None of them could give him any news of Woking except one man. This man told him that Woking had been completely destroyed the night before. “I come from Byfleet,” he said. “A man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning. He ran from door to door and warned us to get away. Then soldiers came. We went out to look, and there were clouds of smoke to the south. There was nothing but smoke, and not a soul was coming from that way. Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and people started coming from Weybridge. So I’ve locked up my house and come on.” At that time people in the streets felt strongly that the authorities were to blame. They thought the authorities should have got rid of the invaders without all this trouble. At about eight o’clock the sound of heavy firing could be heard clearly all over the south of London. My brother could not hear it in the main streets because of the traffic. But he walked through the quiet back streets to the river. There he could hear it quite plainly. He walked from Westminster to his rooms near Regent’s Park, a distance of about two miles. He was now very worried about me. It upset him to see how big the trouble clearly was. His mind kept turning to military details, as mine had done on Saturday. He thought of all those silent guns, waiting. He thought of all the people in the countryside who had suddenly left their homes. He tried to imagine “boilers on stilts” a hundred feet high. One or two carts full of refugees were going along Oxford Street, and several more in the Marylebone Road. But the news was spreading very slowly. Regent Street and Portland Place were full of the usual people taking a Sunday-night walk. They were talking in groups, it is true. And along the edge of Regent’s Park there were as many silent couples as ever. They were “walking out” together under the gas lamps, which stood far apart. The night was warm and still, and a little heavy. The sound of guns went on now and then. After midnight there seemed to be lightning far away in the south, lighting up the whole sky. He read the paper again and again. He feared that the worst had happened to me. He was restless. After supper he went out again and walked about without any aim. He came back and tried to think about his examination notes, but it was no use. He went to bed a little after midnight. He had terrible, vivid dreams. In the early hours of Monday he was woken by many noises. There was the sound of door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drums and a loud ringing of bells. Red reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay there in surprise. He wondered whether day had come or whether the world had gone mad. Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window. His room was an attic. He pushed his head out of the window. All up and down the street a dozen other windows banged open in answer to his. Heads appeared, and people were in every kind of night clothes. People were shouting questions. A policeman was hammering at a door. “They are coming!” he shouted. “The Martians are coming!” And he hurried to the next door. The sound of drums and trumpets came from the Albany Street Barracks. Every church that he could hear was ringing its bells wildly as an alarm. No one could sleep through it. There was a noise of doors opening. In the houses opposite, one window after another went from darkness to yellow light. A closed carriage came galloping up the street. Its noise burst out suddenly at the corner and rose to a loud clatter under the window. Then it slowly died away in the distance. Close behind it came two cabs. They were the first of a long line of vehicles that were fleeing. Most of them were going to Chalk Farm station. The North-Western special trains were filling up with people there. They were not coming down the hill into Euston as usual. For a long time my brother stared out of the window in complete surprise. He watched the policemen hammering at one door after another. They were shouting their message, which no one could understand. Then the door behind him opened. The man who lived across the landing came in. He was wearing only a shirt, trousers and slippers. His braces hung loose around his waist, and his hair was untidy from his pillow. “What the devil is it?” he asked. “A fire? What a devil of a noise!” They both leaned their heads far out of the window. They tried hard to hear what the policemen were shouting. People were coming out of the side streets and standing in groups at the corners, talking. “What the devil is it all about?” said my brother’s fellow lodger. My brother gave him an unclear answer and began to dress. With each piece of clothing he ran to the window, because he did not want to miss anything. The excitement was growing. Soon men came shouting into the street. They were selling newspapers at a strangely early hour. “London in danger of being choked! The Kingston and Richmond defences broken! Terrible killings in the Thames Valley!” And all around him people were waking. They were waking in the rooms below and in the houses on each side and across the road. They were waking behind him in the Park Terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of Marylebone. They were waking in the Westbourne Park district and St. Pancras. They were waking in the west and north, in Kilburn and St. John’s Wood and Hampstead. They were waking in the east, in Shoreditch and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton. In fact, they were waking all through huge London, from Ealing to East Ham. People were rubbing their eyes. They were opening windows to stare out and ask useless questions. They were dressing in a hurry. The first wind of the coming storm of Fear was blowing through the streets. It was the dawn of the great panic. On Sunday night London had gone to bed knowing nothing and doing nothing. Now, in the early hours of Monday morning, it woke up to a strong sense of danger. My brother could not learn from his window what was happening. So he went downstairs and out into the street. The sky between the tops of the houses was turning pink with the early dawn. Every moment more people were fleeing, on foot and in vehicles. “Black Smoke!” he heard people crying, and again, “Black Smoke!” Everyone felt the same fear, and it was impossible not to catch it. My brother stood on the doorstep for a moment, unable to decide. Then he saw another newspaper seller coming, and he bought a paper at once. The man was running away with the others. He was selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran. It was a strange and ugly mixture of making money and panic. And in this paper my brother read the terrible report of the Commander-in-Chief: “The Martians can send out enormous clouds of a black and poisonous gas by means of rockets. They have choked our batteries. They have destroyed Richmond, Kingston and Wimbledon. They are advancing slowly towards London and destroying everything on the way. It is impossible to stop them. The only safety from the Black Smoke is to flee at once.” That was all, but it was enough. The whole population of the great city of six million people was moving. People were stirring, slipping and running. Soon they would be pouring northward all together. “Black Smoke!” the voices cried. “Fire!” The bells of the church nearby made a wild, jangling noise. A cart was driven carelessly and smashed against the water trough up the street. There were screams and curses. Pale yellow lights moved backwards and forwards in the houses. Some of the passing cabs still had their lamps lit. And above it all the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm. He heard footsteps running backwards and forwards in the rooms and up and down the stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door. She was loosely wrapped in a dressing gown and shawl. Her husband followed her, crying out. My brother began to understand what all these things meant. He turned quickly back to his own room. He put all the money he had into his pockets, some ten pounds altogether. Then he went out again into the streets. ### Glossary - **crammer’s**: a private school that prepares students quickly for exams - **music hall**: a theatre with singing, dancing and comedy - **Sunday League trips**: special Sunday train trips to the seaside or the country - **battalion**: a large group of soldiers, often several hundred - **Maxims**: early machine guns - **hussars**: soldiers who ride horses - **evensong**: an evening church service - **reservist**: a former soldier who can be called back to the army - **wire-guns**: very large, heavy guns made with steel wire wound round them - **Derby Day**: the day of a famous horse race at Epsom, with huge crowds - **walking out**: an old phrase for a young couple going out together - **attic**: a room at the top of a house, under the roof ## XV. What Had Happened in Surrey The curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford. My brother had watched the refugees streaming over Westminster Bridge. And at that same time the Martians had started to attack again. Different people have given different accounts, so it is hard to be sure. But as far as one can tell, most of them stayed busy in the Horsell pit until nine that night. They were hurrying on with some work that sent out huge clouds of green smoke. But three of them certainly came out at about eight o’clock. They moved forward slowly and carefully. They made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford towards Ripley and Weybridge. So they came into sight of the waiting batteries against the setting sun. These Martians did not move together in a group. They moved in a line, and each was perhaps a mile and a half from the next. They talked to one another with howls like sirens. The howls ran up and down from one note to another. We had heard this howling at Upper Halliford. We had also heard the firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George’s Hill. The gunners at Ripley were volunteers with no experience of battle. They should never have been put in such a position. They fired one wild shot from all their guns together. It was too early, and it did no harm. Then they ran away on horses and on foot through the empty village. The Martian did not even use his Heat-Ray. He walked calmly over their guns and stepped carefully among them. He passed in front of them. And so he came by surprise upon the guns in Painshill Park, and he destroyed them. The men on St. George’s Hill, however, had better leaders, or they were braver men. They were hidden by a pine wood. The Martian nearest to them seems to have had no idea that they were there. They aimed their guns as calmly as if they were on parade. Then they fired from a distance of about a thousand yards. The shells flashed all round him. People saw him walk forward a few steps, stagger and fall. Everybody shouted together, and the men reloaded the guns in wild haste. The fallen Martian gave a long, loud howl. At once a second shining giant answered him. It appeared over the trees to the south. It seems that one of the shells had smashed a leg of the tripod. All the shells of the second shot missed the Martian on the ground. At the same moment both his companions turned their Heat-Rays on the battery. The ammunition blew up, and all the pine trees around the guns burst into flame. Only one or two of the men escaped. They were the ones who were already running over the top of the hill. After this it seems that the three Martians talked together and stopped. The scouts who were watching them say that they stayed completely still for the next half hour. The fallen Martian crawled slowly out of his hood. He was a small brown figure. From that distance he looked strangely like a tiny spot of disease on a plant. He was apparently repairing his machine’s leg. He had finished by about nine o’clock, because then his cowl was seen above the trees again. It was a few minutes after nine that night when four other Martians joined these three sentinels. Each of the four was carrying a thick black tube. They gave a tube like this to each of the three. Then the seven Martians spread themselves out at equal distances along a curved line. The line went between St. George’s Hill, Weybridge and the village of Send, south-west of Ripley. As soon as the Martians began to move, a dozen rockets shot up from the hills in front of them. They warned the waiting batteries around Ditton and Esher. At the same time four of their fighting-machines crossed the river. They were also carrying tubes. Two of them came into sight of the curate and me, black against the western sky. We were hurrying, tired and in pain, along the road that runs north out of Halliford. They seemed to us to be moving on a cloud. A milky mist covered the fields, and it rose to a third of their height. When he saw them, the curate gave a weak cry in his throat and began to run. But I knew that it was no good running from a Martian. I turned aside and crawled through wet nettles and brambles into the wide ditch beside the road. He looked back and saw what I was doing. Then he turned and joined me. The two Martians stopped. The nearer one stood facing Sunbury. The other one was far away towards Staines. It was only an unclear grey shape below the evening star. The Martians had stopped their howling now. They took up their positions in a huge crescent around their cylinders in complete silence. The crescent was twelve miles from one end to the other. Never since the invention of gunpowder had the beginning of a battle been so quiet. It would have looked exactly the same to us and to someone watching near Ripley. The Martians seemed to have the darkening night all to themselves. The only light came from the thin moon, the stars and the last light of the day. There was also the red glare from St. George’s Hill and the woods of Painshill. But the guns were waiting everywhere, facing that crescent. They were at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton, Esher and Ockham. They were behind hills and woods south of the river. They were across the flat grass meadows to the north of it. They were wherever a group of trees or village houses gave enough cover. The signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night, and then they were gone. In all those watching batteries the men waited, full of tension. The Martians only had to move into the line of fire. Then at once all those still black figures of men would spring into action. Those guns, shining darkly in the early night, would burst into a thundering, furious battle. No doubt one thought was strongest in a thousand of those watchful minds. It was strongest in my mind too. It was a puzzle: how much did the Martians understand about us? Did they understand that we were millions, and that we were organised and trained and working together? Or did they see our bursts of fire and the sting of our shells as we see angry bees? Did they see our steady ring of guns around their camp in the same way? A hive of angry bees all attacks together when someone disturbs it. Did they dream that they could kill all of us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A hundred questions like these fought together in my mind as I watched that huge guard. And at the back of my mind I thought of all the great, unknown, hidden forces towards London. Had they prepared traps? Were the powder factories at Hounslow ready to blow up the Martians? Would the Londoners be brave enough to burn their own huge city of houses? Would they make it a greater Moscow? We were crouching and looking through the hedge. After a time that seemed endless to us, we heard a sound like a distant gun. Then another came, nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside us raised his tube high. He fired it like a gun, with a heavy bang that made the ground shake. The one towards Staines answered him. There was no flash and no smoke. There was only that heavy, dull explosion. The heavy shots followed one another at slow intervals. They excited me so much that I forgot my own safety and my scalded hands. I climbed up into the hedge and stared towards Sunbury. As I did so, a second shot followed. A big object flew over our heads with a loud rushing sound towards Hounslow. I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some other sign of what it had done. But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with one lonely star. Below it the white mist was spreading wide and low. And there had been no crash, no explosion in answer. The silence came back. One minute grew to three. “What has happened?” said the curate, standing up beside me. “Heaven knows!” I said. A bat flew past and disappeared. Far away a loud noise of shouting began and stopped. I looked again at the Martian. He was now moving east along the riverbank, with a fast, rolling movement. Every moment I expected some hidden battery to fire at him. But the calm of the evening was not broken. The Martian grew smaller as he went away. Soon the mist and the coming night had swallowed him up. Without a word, we both climbed higher. Towards Sunbury there was something dark. It looked as if a hill shaped like a cone had suddenly appeared there. It hid our view of the country beyond. Then, further away across the river, over Walton, we saw another hill-top like it. These hill-like shapes grew lower and wider even as we stared. A sudden thought came to me, and I looked north. There I saw that a third of these black, cloudy kopjes had risen. Everything had suddenly become very still. Far away to the south-east we heard the Martians hooting to one another in the silence. Then the air shook again with the distant thud of their guns. But our earthly guns gave no answer. At the time we could not understand these things. But later I learned the meaning of these frightening kopjes that gathered in the twilight. Each of the Martians in the great crescent had a gun-like tube. With it each one had fired a huge canister over whatever was in front of him. This might be a hill, a small wood, a group of houses or any other place where guns could hide. Some fired only one canister and some fired two, like the Martian we had seen. The one at Ripley is said to have fired at least five at that time. These canisters smashed when they hit the ground, but they did not explode. At once they let out an enormous amount of heavy black gas, as black as ink. It rolled and poured upward in a huge cloud as black as ebony. It was a hill of gas, and it sank and spread slowly over the country around it. If this gas touched you, or if you breathed even a little of its sharp smoke, you died. It killed every living thing that breathes. This gas was heavy. It was heavier than the thickest smoke. At first it burst upward and outward when the canister hit. But after that it sank down through the air. It poured over the ground more like a liquid than a gas. It left the hills and streamed into the valleys and ditches and streams. I have heard that a certain gas behaves in the same way. It is called carbonic-acid gas, and it pours from cracks in volcanoes. When the black gas came to water, there was a chemical reaction. At once the surface was covered with a scum like powder. The scum sank slowly, and then more scum took its place. The scum would not dissolve at all. The gas killed instantly, so it is strange that the water was safe. You could drink it without harm, once the scum was taken out. The vapour did not spread out in the way that a true gas does. It stayed together in banks. It flowed slowly down the slopes of the land. It moved before the wind, but only unwillingly. Very slowly it mixed with the mist and water in the air. Then it sank to the earth as dust. We know only one thing about what this substance is. It contains an unknown element that shows a group of four lines in the blue part of the spectrum. Apart from that, we still know nothing about it. After it had burst out and spread, the Black Smoke stayed very close to the ground. It did this even before it turned to dust. So people who were fifty feet up in the air had a chance of escaping its poison completely. They could be on roofs, in the upper floors of tall houses or in big trees. This was proved that very night at Street Cobham and Ditton. The man who escaped at Street Cobham tells a wonderful story about it. He describes the strange way it rolled and flowed. He looked down from the church spire. He saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of the empty blackness. He stayed up there for a day and a half. He was tired, starving and burned by the sun. Below the blue sky the land was a wide area as black as velvet. Behind it he could see the distant hills. Here and there things rose out of the black into the sunlight. There were red roofs and green trees. Later there were bushes and gates, barns, sheds and walls, covered in a thin black layer. But at Street Cobham the black gas was left until it sank into the ground by itself. Usually the Martians cleared it away again when it had done its work. They walked into it and sprayed a jet of steam on it. They did this with the banks of gas near us. We had gone back to an empty house at Upper Halliford. From its window we saw them do it in the starlight. From there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill moving backwards and forwards. At about eleven o’clock the windows shook. We heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been placed there. They went on firing now and then for a quarter of an hour. They sent shots at random at the Martians at Hampton and Ditton, who could not be seen. Then the pale beams of the electric lights disappeared. A bright red glow took their place. Then the fourth cylinder fell, like a brilliant green meteor. I learned later that it fell in Bushey Park. Earlier, before the guns on the hills at Richmond and Kingston began, there had been other firing. It was irregular, and it was far away in the south-west. I believe the gunners there fired at random before the black gas could reach them and kill them. So the Martians spread this strange, choking gas over the country towards London. They went about it as carefully as men might smoke out a wasps’ nest. The two ends of the crescent slowly moved apart. At last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. All night their deadly tubes moved forward. The Martian at St. George’s Hill had been brought down. After that, the Martians never once gave the artillery even the smallest chance against them. Guns might be hidden somewhere and aimed at them. Wherever this was possible, they fired a new canister of the black gas. And where the guns could be seen openly, they used the Heat-Ray. By midnight the trees were blazing along the slopes of Richmond Park, and Kingston Hill was glowing. Their light shone on a network of black smoke. It covered the whole valley of the Thames and stretched as far as the eye could see. And two Martians walked slowly through it. They turned their hissing jets of steam this way and that. They did not use the Heat-Ray much that night. Perhaps they had only a limited supply of material for making it. Or perhaps they did not want to destroy the country. Perhaps they only wanted to crush and frighten the people who had fought against them. They certainly succeeded in this second aim. Sunday night was the end of organised fighting against them. After that no group of men would stand against them, because it was so hopeless. Torpedo-boats and destroyers had brought their quick-firing guns up the Thames. Even their crews refused to stay. They mutinied and went back down the river. After that night, men tried only one kind of attack. They prepared mines and hidden pits. And even this work was done wildly, in short bursts. One has to imagine, as well as one can, what happened to those batteries towards Esher. They had waited with such tension in the twilight. No one there survived. One can picture the calm, orderly waiting. The officers were alert and watchful, and the gunners were ready. The ammunition was piled close at hand. The limber gunners were there with their horses and waggons. Groups of people who were not soldiers stood and watched, as close as they were allowed. The evening was still. There were ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded men from Weybridge. Then came the dull sound of the shots that the Martians fired. The clumsy object came spinning over the trees and houses. It smashed in the fields nearby. One can picture, too, how suddenly the men turned to look. The blackness was rushing forward, spreading in rolls and swelling clouds. It towered up into the sky. It turned the twilight into a darkness so thick that you could almost touch it. It was a strange and horrible enemy made of gas, striding over its victims. Men and horses near it could be seen dimly. They were running, screaming and falling. There were shouts of terror. The guns were suddenly left behind. Men were choking and twisting on the ground. And the cone of smoke, which nobody could see through, was quickly spreading wider. And then came night and death. There was nothing but a silent mass of thick gas hiding its dead. Before dawn the black gas was pouring through the streets of Richmond. The government was falling apart. With one last, dying effort it was waking the people of London and telling them that they must flee. ### Glossary - **batteries**: groups of big guns and the soldiers who use them - **sirens**: machines that make a loud, rising and falling warning sound - **tripod**: a stand with three legs - **cowl**: the top part of a fighting-machine, where the Martian sits - **sentinels**: guards who watch - **crescent**: a curved shape like a thin moon - **kopjes**: small hills (a South African word) - **canister**: a metal container - **spectrum**: the band of colours that light makes when it is split up - **siege guns**: very big, heavy guns used to attack strong places - **a greater Moscow**: burning your own city to stop an enemy, as Moscow was burned in 1812 - **mutinied**: refused to obey their officers ## XVI. The Exodus from London So now you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world. It came just as Monday was dawning. The stream of people fleeing rose quickly to a flood. It crashed and foamed around the railway stations. It piled up in a terrible struggle around the ships on the Thames. And it hurried north and east by every possible way. By ten o’clock the police began to lose control. By midday even the railways were losing it. They were losing their shape and their power to work. They were flickering out like candles, softening and melting. In the end the whole of society turned to liquid and ran away, all very fast. By midnight on Sunday all the railway lines north of the Thames had been warned. So had the South-Eastern railway people at Cannon Street. Trains were being filled. Even at two o’clock people were fighting wildly for standing room in the carriages. By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street. That was a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station. Revolvers were fired, and people were stabbed. Policemen had been sent there to direct the traffic. Now they were exhausted and furious. They were breaking the heads of the very people they had come to protect. As the day went on, the engine drivers and stokers refused to go back to London. So the people who were fleeing were pushed away from the stations. They moved along the roads that ran north, in a crowd that grew thicker all the time. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes. A cloud of black gas was moving along the Thames and across the low, flat land of Lambeth. It was slowly sinking, and it moved slowly. As it went, it cut off every escape over the bridges. Another bank of gas moved over Ealing. It surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill. They were alive, but they could not escape. My brother tried to get onto a North-Western train at Chalk Farm, but it was no use. The trains had been loaded in the goods yard there. Their engines *ploughed* through screaming people. A dozen strong men fought to stop the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace. My brother came out onto the Chalk Farm road. He dodged across it through a hurrying crowd of vehicles. He was lucky, because a cycle shop was being robbed, and he was the first one in. The front tyre of the bicycle he got was punctured when he dragged it through the window. But he got on it and rode off all the same. His only injury was a cut wrist. The steep bottom of Haverstock Hill was blocked by several horses that had fallen over. So my brother turned into Belsize Road. So he got out of the wildest part of the panic. He went round the side of the Edgware Road and reached Edgware at about seven. He was hungry and tired, but he was well ahead of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the street, curious and wondering. A number of cyclists passed him, and some men on horses, and two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of his wheel broke, and he could not ride the bicycle any more. He left it by the side of the road and walked slowly through the village. In the main street some of the shops were half open. People crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows. They stared in surprise at this extraordinary line of refugees, which was just beginning. My brother managed to get some food at an inn. For a time he stayed in Edgware. He did not know what to do next. The number of people fleeing grew. Many of them, like my brother, seemed to want to stay there for a while. There was no new news of the invaders from Mars. At that time the road was crowded, but it was not yet blocked. At that hour most of the refugees were on bicycles. But soon there were motor cars, hansom cabs and carriages hurrying along too. The dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans. My brother had some friends who lived in Chelmsford. Perhaps he had a vague idea of going to them. Perhaps that is why at last he turned into a quiet lane that ran east. Soon he came to a stile. He climbed over it and followed a footpath north-east. He passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names he never learned. He saw few refugees there. Then, in a grassy lane towards High Barnet, he came upon two ladies. They became his travelling companions. He came upon them just in time to save them. He heard them screaming and hurried round the corner. Two men were struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise they had been driving. A third man was holding the frightened pony’s head with difficulty. One of the ladies was a short woman dressed in white, and she was just screaming. The other was a dark, slender figure. A man was holding her arm. She had a whip in her free hand, and she was hitting him with it. My brother understood the situation at once. He shouted and hurried towards the fight. One of the men stopped and turned towards him. My brother saw from the man’s face that a fight could not be avoided. He was an expert boxer, so he went for him at once. He knocked him down against the wheel of the chaise. It was no time for fighting fairly by the rules of boxing. My brother kicked the man, and he lay still. Then my brother took hold of the collar of the man who was pulling at the slender lady’s arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs. The whip stung him across the face. A third man hit him between the eyes. And the man he was holding pulled himself free. He ran off down the lane, back the way he had come. My brother was half stunned. He found himself facing the man who had held the horse’s head. He saw that the chaise was moving away from him down the lane. It was swaying from side to side, and the women in it were looking back. The man in front of him was a big, heavy rough. He tried to come close and grab my brother, but my brother stopped him with a blow in the face. Then my brother realised that he had been left alone. He dodged round and ran off down the lane after the chaise. The strong man was close behind him. The man who had run away had turned round now, and he followed far behind. Suddenly my brother tripped and fell. The man right behind him fell over him. My brother got to his feet and found two enemies in front of him again. He would have had little chance against them. But the slender lady bravely stopped the chaise and came back to help him. It seems that she had had a revolver all the time. But it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked. She fired from six yards away and only just missed my brother. The less brave of the robbers ran off. His companion followed him and cursed him for being a coward. They both stopped further down the lane, where they could still be seen. The third man was lying there unconscious. “Take this!” said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver. “Go back to the chaise,” said my brother. He was wiping the blood from his split lip. She turned without a word. They were both breathing hard. They went back to where the lady in white was struggling to hold the frightened pony. The robbers had clearly had enough. When my brother looked again, they were going away. “I’ll sit here,” said my brother, “if I may.” And he climbed onto the empty front seat. The lady looked over her shoulder. “Give me the reins,” she said, and she touched the pony’s side with the whip. In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother’s eyes. So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself driving along an unknown lane with these two women. He was breathing hard, and he had a cut mouth, a bruised jaw and blood on his knuckles. He learned that they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon who lived at Stanmore. In the early hours of the morning he had come back from a dangerous case at Pinner. On the way, at some railway station, he had heard that the Martians were advancing. He had hurried home and woken the women. Their servant had left them two days before. He had packed some food. He had put his revolver under the seat, which was lucky for my brother. And he had told them to drive on to Edgware and try to get a train there. He stayed behind to tell the neighbours. He said he would catch up with them at about half past four in the morning. Now it was nearly nine, and they had seen nothing of him. They could not stay in Edgware because more and more traffic was coming through the place. So they had come into this side lane. They told my brother this story in pieces. They told it later, when they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet. He promised to stay with them, at least until they could decide what to do. Or he would stay until the missing man arrived. He told them that he was an expert shot with the revolver. In fact it was a weapon he did not know at all. But he said it to give them confidence. They made a sort of camp by the side of the road, and the pony was happy in the hedge. My brother told them how he had escaped from London. He told them everything he knew about these Martians and their ways. The sun climbed higher in the sky. After a time their talk died away. Instead they waited uneasily for something to happen. Several travellers came along the lane, and my brother got what news he could from them. Each broken answer made him feel more strongly how great a disaster had come to mankind. Each answer made him more sure that they must go on fleeing at once. He told the women this very firmly. “We have money,” said the slender woman, and then she hesitated. Her eyes met my brother’s, and she stopped hesitating. “So have I,” said my brother. She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, and a five-pound note as well. She suggested that with this money they might get on a train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was hopeless. He had seen how wildly the Londoners were crowding onto the trains. So he told them his own idea. They could go across Essex towards Harwich. From there they could escape from the country altogether. Mrs. Elphinstone was the name of the woman in white. She would not listen to any reasons, and she kept calling for “George.” But her sister-in-law was surprisingly quiet and thoughtful. At last she agreed to my brother’s plan. They wanted to cross the Great North Road, so they went on towards Barnet. My brother led the pony, so that it would not get too tired. As the sun climbed up the sky, the day became extremely hot. Under their feet there was thick, whitish sand. It grew burning hot, and its brightness blinded them. So they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust. And as they went on towards Barnet, a loud, confused murmur grew stronger. They began to meet more people. Most of them were staring in front of them and murmuring unclear questions. They looked worn out, tired and dirty. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, with his eyes on the ground. They heard his voice and looked back at him. He had one hand in his hair, gripping it tightly. With the other hand he was beating at things that were not there. When his attack of rage was over, he went on his way. He did not look back once. My brother’s group went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet. On their left they saw a woman coming towards the road across some fields. She was carrying a child, and two other children were with her. Then they passed a man in dirty black clothes. He had a thick stick in one hand and a small travelling case in the other. Then a little cart came round the corner of the lane. It came from between the houses that stood where the lane met the main road. It was pulled by a sweating black pony. The driver was a young man with an unhealthy yellow face, in a bowler hat that was grey with dust. In the cart were three girls who worked in factories in the East End, and two little children. They were all crowded together. “This’ll tike us rahnd Edgware?” asked the driver. His eyes were wild, and his face was white. My brother told him it would, if he turned to the left. The young man whipped up the pony at once. He did not stop to say thank you. My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or mist rising among the houses in front of them. Beyond the road there was a white row of houses, and it was partly hidden by this haze. The road showed between the backs of the nearer houses. Suddenly Mrs. Elphinstone cried out. Above the houses in front of them tongues of smoky red flame were leaping up against the hot, blue sky. The loud noise now became clearer. It was a confused mixture of many voices and the grinding of many wheels. There was the creaking of waggons and the sharp beat of hoofs. Not fifty yards from the crossroads the lane turned sharply. “Good heavens!” cried Mrs. Elphinstone. “What is this you are driving us into?” My brother stopped. The main road was a boiling stream of people. It was a flood of human beings rushing north, one pushing on another. A great bank of dust hung over it, white and bright in the blazing sun. Everything within twenty feet of the ground was grey and unclear. The dust was always being stirred up again. A thick crowd of horses and of men and women on foot was hurrying along. And there were wheels of every kind of vehicle. “Way!” my brother heard voices crying. “Make way!” They came near the place where the lane met the road. It was like riding into the smoke of a fire. The crowd roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and stung their noses. And in fact a house was burning a little way up the road. It was sending rolling clouds of black smoke across the road and adding to the confusion. Two men came past them. Then came a dirty woman who was carrying a heavy bundle and crying. A lost retriever dog with its tongue hanging out circled round them. It did not seem sure of them, and it was frightened and miserable. My brother threatened it, and it ran away. They could see some of the road towards London between the houses on the right. It was a wild stream of dirty, hurrying people, packed in between the houses on each side. The black heads and the crowded bodies grew clear as they rushed towards the corner. They hurried past. Then they became one crowd again as they went away. At last the crowd was swallowed up in a cloud of dust. “Go on! Go on!” cried the voices. “Way! Way!” One man’s hands were pushing on the back of another. My brother stood at the pony’s head. Something pulled him on, and he could not stop it. He moved slowly down the lane, step by step. Edgware had been confused, and Chalk Farm had been a wild riot. But this was a whole population on the move. It is hard to imagine that huge crowd. It had no character of its own. The figures poured out past the corner. Then they moved away, with their backs to the group in the lane. Along the edges came the people on foot. The wheels were a danger to them. They were stumbling in the ditches and bumping into one another. The carts and carriages crowded close together. They left little room for the faster vehicles, which were more impatient. Every now and then one of these saw a chance and rushed forward. It sent the people flying against the fences and gates of the houses. “Push on!” was the cry. “Push on! They are coming!” In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army. He was waving his bent fingers and shouting, “Eternity! Eternity!” His voice was rough and very loud. My brother could hear him long after he had disappeared into the dust. Some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped their horses stupidly. They argued with other drivers. Some sat without moving, staring at nothing with miserable eyes. Some were biting their hands because they were so thirsty. Some lay flat in the bottom of their carts. The metal bits in the horses’ mouths were covered with foam, and their eyes were red with blood. There were more cabs, carriages, shop-carts and waggons than anyone could count. There was a cart for carrying the mail. There was a road-cleaner’s cart marked “Vestry of St. Pancras.” There was a huge cart for carrying wood, crowded with rough men. A brewer’s dray went rumbling by. Its two nearest wheels were splashed with fresh blood. “Clear the way!” cried the voices. “Clear the way!” “Eter-nity! Eter-nity!” came echoing down the road. Sad, worn-out women came walking by. They were well dressed, and they had children who cried and stumbled. The children’s pretty clothes were covered with dust, and their tired faces were streaked with tears. Men came with many of these women. Sometimes the men were helpful, and sometimes they were dark-faced and savage. Pushing beside them were people who lived on the streets, in faded black rags. They were wide-eyed, loud and used bad language. There were strong workmen pushing their way along. There were miserable, untidy men, dressed like clerks or shop assistants, struggling in wild bursts. My brother noticed a wounded soldier and men in the clothes of railway porters. One poor creature was wearing a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it. All kinds of people were in that huge crowd. But they all had certain things in common. There was fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. A noise up the road, or a fight for a place in a waggon, made the whole crowd walk faster. One man was so frightened and broken that his knees were bending under him. Even he came back to life for a moment. The heat and dust had already done their work on this crowd. Their skin was dry, and their lips were black and cracked. They were all thirsty, tired, and their feet hurt. Among all the cries you could hear arguments, angry words and groans of tiredness. Most of their voices were rough and weak. And through it all ran one cry, again and again: “Way! Way! The Martians are coming!” Few people stopped and stepped out of that flood. The lane joined the main road at a slant, through a narrow opening. It looked as if it came from the direction of London, but it did not. Even so, people kept drifting into its entrance, like water turning round in a river. These were weak people who had been pushed out of the stream. Most of them rested only for a moment before they threw themselves back into it. A little way down the lane lay a man with a bare leg wrapped in bloody rags. Two friends were bending over him. He was a lucky man to have friends. A little old man limped out and sat down beside the trap. He had a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat. He took off his boot. His sock was stained with blood. He shook a small stone out of the boot and limped on again. And then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw herself down under the hedge. She was close to my brother, and she was crying. “I can’t go on! I can’t go on!” My brother woke from his surprise, which had held him like a heavy sleep. He lifted her up and spoke gently to her. He carried her to Miss Elphinstone. As soon as my brother touched her, she became quite still, as if she were frightened. “Ellen!” screamed a woman in the crowd, with tears in her voice. “Ellen!” And the child suddenly ran away from my brother, crying, “Mother!” “They are coming,” said a man on horseback as he rode past along the lane. “Out of the way, there!” shouted a coachman, high up on his seat. My brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane. The people pushed back against one another to get away from the horse. My brother pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge. The man drove past and stopped at the turn of the lane. The carriage had a pole for two horses, but only one horse was pulling it. Through the dust my brother could just see two men lift something out on a white stretcher. They put it gently on the grass under the privet hedge. One of the men came running to my brother. “Where is there any water?” he said. “He is dying fast, and he is very thirsty. It is Lord Garrick.” “Lord Garrick!” said my brother. “The Chief Justice?” “The water?” he said. “There may be a tap in some of the houses,” said my brother. “We have no water. I dare not leave my people.” The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the house on the corner. “Go on!” said the people, and they pushed at him. “They are coming! Go on!” Then something else caught my brother’s attention. A man with a beard and a face like an eagle was carrying a small handbag. It was heavy. Just as my brother looked at it, it split open. A mass of sovereigns poured out. When it hit the ground, it seemed to break up into separate coins. They rolled here and there among the struggling feet of men and horses. The man stopped and stared stupidly at the heap. The long wooden arm of a cab hit his shoulder and sent him staggering. He gave a scream and jumped back, and a cartwheel only just missed him. “Way!” cried the men all around him. “Make way!” As soon as the cab had passed, he threw himself on the heap of coins with both hands open. He began pushing handfuls into his pocket. A horse reared up close above him. A moment later, as he was half getting up, he was knocked down under the horse’s hoofs. “Stop!” screamed my brother. He pushed a woman out of his way and tried to grab the horse’s bit. Before he could reach it, he heard a scream under the wheels. Through the dust he saw the rim of the wheel pass over the poor man’s back. The driver of the cart hit out at my brother with his whip. My brother ran round behind the cart. The shouting of so many voices confused him. The man was twisting in the dust among his scattered money. He could not get up, because the wheel had broken his back. His legs lay soft and dead. My brother stood up and shouted at the next driver. A man on a black horse came to help him. “Get him out of the road,” said the man on the horse. My brother took hold of the man’s collar with his free hand and pulled him sideways. But the man still reached for his money. He looked fiercely at my brother and hit his arm again and again with a handful of gold. “Go on! Go on!” shouted angry voices behind them. “Way! Way!” There was a crash. The pole of a carriage had hit the cart that the man on horseback had stopped. My brother looked up. The man with the gold turned his head round and bit the wrist that was holding his collar. Then something hit them. The black horse came staggering sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it. A hoof missed my brother’s foot by a hair. He let go of the fallen man and jumped back. He saw the anger on the poor man’s face change to terror. A moment later the man was hidden. My brother was pushed backwards and carried past the entrance of the lane. He had to fight hard against the flood to get back to it. He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes. A little child was staring with wide eyes at something on the road. Children do not imagine the pain of others. It was a dusty thing that lay black and still, ground and crushed under the rolling wheels. “Let us go back!” my brother shouted, and he began to turn the pony round. “We cannot cross this—hell,” he said. They went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was out of sight. They passed the bend in the lane. There my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet. It was deadly white and thin, and it was shining with sweat. The two women sat in silence, bent low in their seat and shivering. Then, beyond the bend, my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was white and pale. Her sister-in-law sat crying. She was too miserable even to call for “George.” My brother was horrified and did not know what to do. But as soon as they had gone back, he realised one thing. They had to try to cross that road. It was urgent, and there was no other way. He turned to Miss Elphinstone. Suddenly his mind was made up. “We must go that way,” he said, and he led the pony round again. For the second time that day this girl showed what she was made of. They had to force their way into the flood of people. My brother rushed into the traffic and held back a cab horse. At the same time she drove the pony across in front of its head. For a moment a waggon’s wheel caught on theirs. It tore a long piece of wood from the side of the chaise. A moment later the stream caught them and swept them forward. The cabman’s whip had left red marks across my brother’s face and hands. He climbed into the chaise and took the reins from her. “Point the revolver at the man behind us,” he said, and he gave it to her, “if he pushes us too hard. No!—point it at his horse.” Then he began to look for a chance to move to the right across the road. But once he was in the stream, he seemed to lose his own will. He seemed to become part of that dusty crowd in flight. They were swept through Chipping Barnet with the flood. At last they fought their way across to the other side of the road. By then they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town. The noise and confusion were beyond description. But in the town and beyond it, the road divided again and again. This helped to make the pressure a little less. They went east through Hadley. There, on both sides of the road, they came upon a huge crowd of people drinking at the stream. They came upon another crowd further on. Some people were fighting to get to the water. And further on, from a quieter place near East Barnet, they saw two trains. They were running slowly one after the other, with no signals and no order. The trains were packed with people. There were even men among the coal behind the engines. They were going north along the Great Northern Railway. My brother supposes that they must have been filled outside London. At that time the people were wild with terror. No one could use the big stations in the centre. They stopped near this place for the rest of the afternoon. The violence of the day had already exhausted all three of them completely. They began to feel the first pains of hunger. The night was cold, and none of them dared to sleep. And in the evening many people came hurrying along the road near the place where they had stopped. They were fleeing from unknown dangers in front of them. They were going back in the direction my brother had come from. ### Glossary - **exodus**: a time when very many people leave a place together - **stokers**: men who put coal into the fire of a steam engine - **pony-chaise**: a small, light carriage pulled by a pony - **expert boxer**: a person who is very good at fighting with the fists as a sport - **reins**: the long straps that a driver uses to control a horse - **surgeon**: a doctor who does operations - **hansom cabs**: small horse-drawn carriages for hire, with two wheels - **bowler hat**: a hard, round black hat - **brewer’s dray**: a low, heavy cart for carrying barrels of beer - **privet hedge**: a thick hedge of a common garden bush with small leaves - **sovereigns**: old British gold coins - **bit**: the metal bar in a horse’s mouth, joined to the reins ## XVII. The “Thunder Child” If the Martians had wanted only to destroy, they could have killed the whole population of London on Monday. The people were spreading slowly through the home counties. The same wild flight poured along the road through Barnet. It also poured through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads east to Southend and Shoeburyness. And south of the Thames it poured towards Deal and Broadstairs. Imagine that someone could have hung in a balloon in the blazing blue sky above London that June morning. Many roads ran north and east out of the confused tangle of streets. To him every one of them would have seemed dotted with black. The dots were the streaming refugees. Each dot was a human being suffering terror and pain in the body. In the last chapter I gave my brother’s account of the road through Chipping Barnet at great length. I wanted my readers to understand how that swarm of black dots looked to one of the people in it. Never before in the history of the world had so many human beings moved and suffered together. There are old stories about the great armies of the Goths and the Huns. There were the biggest armies that Asia has ever seen. They would all have been only a drop in that stream. And this was not an orderly march. It was a stampede, a huge and terrible stampede. It had no order and no goal. Six million people were rushing wildly forward, without weapons and without food. It was the beginning of the defeat of civilisation, and of the killing of mankind. Directly below him the man in the balloon would have seen the network of streets, far and wide. He would have seen houses, churches, squares, curved streets and gardens, all already empty. They would have been spread out like a huge map. And in the south the map was *blotted*. Over Ealing, Richmond and Wimbledon it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had thrown ink on the map. Steadily, without stopping, each black splash grew and spread. It sent out branches this way and that. Sometimes it piled up against higher ground. Sometimes it poured quickly over the top of a hill into a new valley. It was exactly like a drop of ink spreading on blotting paper. And beyond, over the blue hills that rise south of the river, the shining Martians went backwards and forwards. They were calm and careful. They spread their poison cloud over one piece of country and then over another. When it had done its work, they cleared it again with their steam jets. And they took control of the land they had conquered. They do not seem to have wanted to kill every human being. They wanted rather to break our spirit completely and to destroy anyone who fought against them. They blew up any stores of gunpowder they found. They cut every telegraph line, and they wrecked the railways here and there. They were crippling mankind, so that it could not move. They seemed to be in no hurry to go further. They did not come beyond the central part of London all that day. It is possible that very many people in London stayed in their houses through Monday morning. It is certain that many died at home, choked by the Black Smoke. Until about midday the Pool of London was an amazing sight. Steamboats and ships of all kinds lay there. The refugees offered huge sums of money, and this kept the ships there. It is said that many people swam out to these ships. The sailors pushed them off with long hooks, and they drowned. At about one o’clock in the afternoon a thin cloud of black gas appeared. It was the last thin part of a bigger cloud, and it came between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge. At that, the Pool became a scene of mad confusion. There was fighting, and boats crashed into one another. For some time a great crowd of boats and barges was stuck in the northern arch of Tower Bridge. People swarmed onto the boats from the riverbank. The sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely to keep them off. People were even climbing down the stone pillars of the bridge from above. An hour later a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and walked down the river through the water. After that, nothing but wreckage floated on the river above Limehouse. I will tell about the fall of the fifth cylinder soon. The sixth star fell at Wimbledon. My brother was keeping watch beside the women in the chaise in a meadow. He saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills. On Tuesday the little group was still determined to get across the sea. They made their way through the crowded country towards Colchester. The news was now certain: the Martians had taken the whole of London. They had been seen at Highgate, and it was said they had even been seen at Neasden. But my brother did not see them until the next day. That day the huge, scattered crowds began to understand that they urgently needed food. As people grew hungry, they stopped caring who owned things. Farmers came out with guns in their hands. They were defending their cattle sheds, their grain stores and their crops of vegetables. A number of people were now going east, like my brother. And some desperate people were even going back towards London to get food. These were mostly people from the northern suburbs. They had only heard about the Black Smoke from others. My brother heard that about half the members of the government had met at Birmingham. He heard that huge amounts of high explosives were being prepared. They were going to be used in automatic mines across the Midland counties. He was also told about the Midland Railway Company. On the first day of the panic many of its workers had run away. Now it had found new workers to take their place. It had started its trains again. It was running trains north from St. Albans to take the crowds away from the home counties. There was also a poster in Chipping Ongar. It said that there were large stores of flour in the northern towns. It said that within twenty-four hours bread would be given out to the starving people in the area. But this news did not change my brother’s plan of escape. The three of them pushed on east all day. They heard nothing more about the bread than this promise. In fact, nobody else heard any more about it either. That night the seventh star fell. It fell on Primrose Hill. It fell while Miss Elphinstone was keeping watch. She and my brother took turns at this duty. She saw it. On Wednesday the three refugees reached Chelmsford. They had spent the night in a field of wheat that was not yet ripe. At Chelmsford a group of the people who lived there called itself the Committee of Public Supply. This committee took the pony as food. It gave them nothing in return except the promise of a share of it the next day. There were rumours here that Martians were at Epping. There was also news that the Waltham Abbey Powder Mills had been destroyed. People had tried to blow up one of the invaders there, but they had failed. People here were watching for Martians from the church towers. All three of them were very hungry. But my brother chose to push on to the coast at once, instead of waiting for food. As it happened, this was very lucky for him. By midday they passed through Tillingham. It was strangely silent and empty, except for a few thieves secretly hunting for food. Near Tillingham they suddenly came in sight of the sea. And they saw the most amazing crowd of ships of every kind that you can imagine. The sailors could no longer come up the Thames. So they came to the Essex coast instead, to take the people off. They came to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury. The ships lay in a huge curve shaped like a sickle. Far away towards the Naze it disappeared into the mist. Close to the shore there was a great crowd of fishing smacks. They were English, Scotch, French, Dutch and Swedish. There were steam launches from the Thames, and yachts and electric boats. Further out there were bigger ships. There were many filthy colliers and neat merchant ships. There were ships for cattle, passenger boats, oil tankers and old cargo ships. There was even an old white ship that once carried soldiers. There were neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg. And along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could just see a thick swarm of boats. Their sailors were arguing over prices with the people on the beach. This swarm also stretched up the Blackwater almost to Maldon. About two miles out lay an ironclad. It was very low in the water. To my brother it looked almost like a ship full of water. This was the ram *Thunder Child*. It was the only warship in sight. But far away to the right there was a long line of black smoke, like a snake, over the smooth sea. There was no wind at all that day. The smoke showed where the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet were. All through the Martian conquest these ships waited in a long line across the mouth of the Thames. Their steam was up, and they were ready for action. They were watchful, but they had no power to stop it. When she saw the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone panicked. Her sister-in-law tried to calm her, but it was no use. She had never been out of England before, she said. She would rather die than go to a foreign country with no friends there, and so on. The poor woman seemed to imagine that the French and the Martians might be very much alike. She had grown more and more hysterical, frightened and miserable during the two days of travelling. Her great wish was to go back to Stanmore. Things had always been fine and safe at Stanmore. They would find George at Stanmore.... They had the greatest trouble in getting her down to the beach. There, after a while, my brother caught the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a boat, and they agreed on a price of thirty-six pounds for the three of them. These men said that the steamer was going to Ostend. It was about two o’clock when my brother paid their fares at the gangway. At last he was safely on board the steamboat with the two women in his care. There was food on board, though the prices were far too high. The three of them managed to eat a meal on one of the seats at the front. There were already a couple of score of passengers on board. Some of them had spent their last money to pay for the journey. But the captain stayed off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon. He picked up more and more passengers, until the decks were dangerously crowded. He would probably have stayed longer, but at about that time the sound of guns began in the south. As if in answer, the ironclad out at sea fired a small gun and put up a line of flags. A jet of smoke burst out of her funnels. Some of the passengers thought that this firing came from Shoeburyness. Then they noticed that it was growing louder. At the same time, far away in the south-east, three ironclads rose out of the sea, one after another. First their masts and upper parts appeared, under clouds of black smoke. But my brother’s attention soon went back to the distant firing in the south. He thought he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey mist. The little steamer was already beating her paddles and moving east of the big curve of ships. The low Essex coast was growing blue and misty. Then a Martian appeared, small and faint, very far away. He was walking along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At that, the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice. He was frightened, and he was angry with himself for waiting so long. The paddles seemed to catch his terror. Every person on board stood at the sides of the steamer or on the seats. They stared at that distant shape. It was taller than the trees or the church towers inland. It was moving forward with slow, easy steps, like a strange copy of a man walking. It was the first Martian my brother had seen. He stood and watched this giant walking steadily towards the ships. He was more amazed than terrified. The Martian waded further and further into the water as the coast went down into the sea. Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another one. He was striding over some small, low trees. And then came yet another, still further off. He was wading deep through a shining area of mud. It seemed to hang halfway between the sea and the sky. They were all walking out to sea. They seemed to want to stop the escape of the great crowd of ships between Foulness and the Naze. The engines of the little paddle-boat were working hard, and they throbbed. Her wheels threw foam out behind her. But she moved away from this dangerous advance terribly slowly. My brother looked north-west. He saw the big curve of ships already twisting with terror as the danger came near. One ship was passing behind another. Another ship was turning round. Steamships were whistling and sending out clouds of steam. Sails were being let out, and small motor boats were rushing here and there. He was fascinated by this and by the danger that was creeping closer on the left. So he did not look out to sea at all. And then the steamboat suddenly turned round, to avoid being hit. The sudden movement threw him off the seat he was standing on. There was shouting all around him, the noise of feet and a cheer. The cheer seemed to get a faint answer. The steamboat rolled, and it threw him over onto his hands. He jumped to his feet. He looked to starboard, and he saw a huge iron mass not a hundred yards from their rolling, tossing boat. It was like the blade of a plough tearing through the water. It threw the water to both sides in huge waves of foam. The waves leaped towards the steamer. They lifted her paddles helplessly into the air. Then they pulled her deck down almost to the level of the water. A shower of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When he could see again, the monster had passed. It was rushing towards the land. Big iron upper parts rose out of this rushing ship. Two funnels stood up from them. They were spitting out a blast of smoke mixed with fire. It was the torpedo ram *Thunder Child*. She was steaming at full speed to save the ships that were in danger. The deck was heaving, so my brother held tightly to the side of the ship to keep his feet. He looked past this charging sea monster at the Martians again. He saw that the three of them were now close together. They were standing so far out to sea that their tripod legs were almost completely under water. They were sunk deep in the water, and they were far away. So they seemed much less frightening than the huge iron ship. The steamer was tossing helplessly in its waves. It seems that the Martians were looking at this new enemy in astonishment. Perhaps they thought that it was a giant like themselves. The *Thunder Child* fired no gun. She simply drove towards them at full speed. Probably this was why she was able to get so near to the enemy. They did not know what to think of her. If she had fired one shell, they would have sunk her at once with the Heat-Ray. She was going so fast that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the Martians. She was a black shape, growing smaller, against the long, flat line of the Essex coast. The coast was moving further away. Suddenly the Martian in front lowered his tube. He fired a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side and bounced off. It rolled away out to sea in a jet as black as ink. It opened out into a flood of Black Smoke. The ironclad drove on and got clear of it. The people watching from the steamer were low in the water, and the sun was in their eyes. To them it seemed that she was already among the Martians. They saw the thin figures separate. The Martians rose out of the water as they went back towards the shore. One of them raised the Heat-Ray machine, which looked like a camera. He pointed it down at an angle. When it touched the water, a cloud of steam jumped up. The Heat-Ray must have gone through the iron side of the ship like a white-hot iron bar through paper. A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam. Then the Martian swayed and staggered. A moment later he was cut down. A great mass of water and steam shot high into the air. The guns of the *Thunder Child* sounded through the smoke and steam, one after another. One shot splashed the water high close to the steamer. It bounced off the water towards the other ships fleeing to the north. It smashed a smack into small pieces of wood. But nobody paid much attention to that. The captain on the bridge saw the Martian fall, and he yelled without words. All the passengers crowding the back of the steamer shouted together. And then they yelled again. Something long and black came rushing out beyond the white, boiling water. Flames were streaming from its middle. Fire was pouring out of its air pipes and funnels. She was still alive. It seems that her steering was not damaged and her engines were working. She went straight for a second Martian. She was within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray hit her. There was a violent thud and a blinding flash. Her decks and her funnels leaped up into the air. The force of her explosion made the Martian stagger. A moment later the burning wreck hit him. It was still moving forward at great speed. It crushed him like a thing made of cardboard. My brother shouted without meaning to. A boiling cloud of steam hid everything again. “Two!” yelled the captain. Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer, from one end to the other, rang with wild cheering. First one ship took up the cheering, and then all of them. The whole great crowd of ships and boats was cheering as it moved out to sea. The steam hung over the water for many minutes. It hid the third Martian and the coast completely. And all this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea, away from the fight. At last the confusion cleared. But now the drifting bank of black gas was in the way. Nothing of the *Thunder Child* could be seen. The third Martian could not be seen either. But the ironclads out at sea were now quite close. They were moving in towards the shore, past the steamboat. The little ship went on fighting its way out to sea. The ironclads moved slowly away towards the coast. The coast was still hidden by a bank of gas with patterns in it like marble. It was partly steam and partly black gas, and they turned and mixed in the strangest way. The fleet of refugees was spreading out to the north-east. Several smacks were sailing between the ironclads and the steamboat. After a time the warships turned north. They had not yet reached the sinking bank of cloud. Then suddenly they turned round and went south into the thickening mist of the evening. The coast grew faint. Low banks of cloud were gathering around the setting sun. At last the coast could not be seen at all among them. Then suddenly the shaking sound of guns came out of the golden mist of the sunset. Black shadows seemed to move there. Everyone pushed to the rail of the steamer. They stared into the west, which was as bright and blinding as a furnace. But they could not see anything clearly. A mass of smoke rose at an angle and lay across the face of the sun. The steamboat throbbed on its way. The waiting and the tension seemed endless. The sun sank into grey clouds. The sky turned red and then grew dark. The evening star came trembling into sight. It was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed. My brother looked hard. Something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness. It rushed upward at an angle, very fast, into the clear, bright sky above the clouds in the west. It was something flat and wide and very large. It swept round in a huge curve and grew smaller. Then it sank slowly and disappeared again into the grey mystery of the night. And as it flew, it rained down darkness on the land. ### Glossary - **home counties**: the counties around London - **stampede**: a sudden wild rush of many people or animals in fear - **Goths and Huns**: fierce peoples of long ago whose huge armies attacked Europe - **blotting paper**: thick, soft paper used to dry wet ink - **Pool of London**: the part of the River Thames below London Bridge where ships lay - **lightermen**: men who work on boats that carry goods on the river - **smacks**: small fishing boats with sails - **colliers**: ships that carry coal - **ironclad**: a warship covered with iron - **ram**: a warship built to crash into enemy ships - **larboard**: the left side of a ship - **starboard**: the right side of a ship ## I. Under Foot *Book Two: The Earth under the Martians* In the first book I moved away from my own adventures many times to tell what happened to my brother. So all through the last two chapters, the curate and I have been hiding in the empty house at Halliford. We had run there to escape the Black Smoke. I will begin my story again there. We stayed there all Sunday night and all the next day, the day of the panic. We were in a little island of daylight, and the Black Smoke cut us off from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait. Those two weary days of doing nothing were painful. My mind was full of worry about my wife. I pictured her at Leatherhead, terrified and in danger. I imagined that she was already mourning me as a dead man. I walked up and down the rooms. I cried out loud when I thought how I was cut off from her. I thought of all the things that might happen to her while I was away. I knew that my cousin was brave enough for any emergency. But he was not the kind of man who sees danger quickly and acts at once. What was needed now was not bravery, but care and caution. My only comfort was to believe that the Martians were moving towards London, away from her. Worries like these, vague as they are, keep the mind tender and painful. I grew very tired of the curate and his endless cries, and I became short-tempered. I was tired of seeing his selfish despair. I argued with him a little, but it did no good. After that I kept away from him. I stayed in a room which was clearly a children’s schoolroom, with globes, benches and copybooks. When he followed me there, I went to a box room at the top of the house. I wanted to be alone with my aching misery, so I locked myself in. The Black Smoke kept us shut in all that day and the morning of the next. There was no hope of escape. On Sunday evening there were signs of people in the next house. We saw a face at a window and moving lights, and later we heard a door slam. But I do not know who these people were, or what happened to them. We saw nothing of them the next day. All through Monday morning the Black Smoke drifted slowly towards the river. It crept nearer and nearer to us. At last it moved along the road outside the house where we were hiding. About midday a Martian came across the fields. He was laying the black stuff with a jet of superheated steam. The steam hissed against the walls and smashed all the windows it touched. It also scalded the curate’s hand as he ran out of the front room. At last we crept across the wet rooms and looked out again. The country to the north looked as if a black snowstorm had passed over it. Then we looked towards the river. We were astonished to see a strange redness mixed with the black of the burnt meadows. We could not explain it. For a time we did not see how this change affected us. We only knew that we no longer had to fear the Black Smoke. But later I understood that we were not shut in any more. Now we could get away. As soon as I saw that the way to escape was open, my dream of action came back. But the curate was slow and lifeless, and he would not listen to reason. “We are safe here,” he said again and again; “safe here.” I decided to leave him. How I wish I had! The artilleryman had taught me something, so I was wiser now. I looked for food and drink. I had already found oil and rags for my burns. I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I found in one of the bedrooms. At last he saw that I meant to go alone. I had accepted that I would go alone. Then he suddenly made up his mind to come. Everything was quiet all through the afternoon. We started at about five o’clock, I think, along the blackened road to Sunbury. In Sunbury, and here and there along the road, dead bodies lay twisted in strange positions. There were horses as well as men. There were overturned carts and luggage, all thickly covered with black dust. That covering of ashy powder made me think of what I had read about the destruction of Pompeii. We reached Hampton Court without any accident. Our minds were full of strange and unfamiliar sights. At Hampton Court our eyes were glad to find a patch of green. The choking black drift had missed it. We went through Bushey Park, where deer were walking to and fro under the chestnut trees. In the distance some men and women were hurrying towards Hampton. And so we came to Twickenham. These were the first people we saw. Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still on fire. Neither the Heat-Ray nor the Black Smoke had damaged Twickenham. There were more people about here, but none of them could give us news. Most of them were like us. They were using a quiet moment to move to another place. I have a feeling that many of the houses here still had people in them. They were so scared that they did not even dare to run away. Here too there was plenty of evidence of a hurried flight along the road. I remember most clearly three smashed bicycles in a heap. The wheels of carts that came later had pressed them into the road. We crossed Richmond Bridge at about half past eight. Of course we hurried across the open bridge. But I noticed a number of red masses floating down the river. Some of them were many feet across. I did not know what they were, and there was no time to look closely. I imagined something more horrible than they really were. Here again, on the Surrey side, there was black dust that had once been smoke. There were dead bodies too, with a heap near the way into the station. But we saw nothing of the Martians until we were some way towards Barnes. In the blackened distance we saw a group of three people running down a side street towards the river. Apart from them the place seemed empty. Up the hill the town of Richmond was burning fast. Outside the town of Richmond there was no sign of the Black Smoke. Then suddenly, as we came near Kew, a number of people came running. Over the housetops we saw the top part of a Martian fighting-machine, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood frozen with horror at our danger. If the Martian had looked down, we would have died at once. We were so terrified that we did not dare to go on. We turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched down, weeping silently, and he refused to move again. But I could not stop thinking about reaching Leatherhead, and the idea would not let me rest. In the twilight I went out again. I went through some bushes and along a passage beside a big house with its own grounds. So I came out on the road towards Kew. I left the curate in the shed, but he came hurrying after me. That second start was the most foolish and reckless thing I ever did. It was plain that the Martians were all around us. The curate had only just caught up with me when we saw a fighting-machine. It was either the one we had seen before or another one. It was far away across the meadows, in the direction of Kew Lodge. Four or five little black figures were hurrying in front of it across the green-grey field. In a moment it was clear that this Martian was chasing them. In three strides he was among them. They ran away from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to destroy them. Instead he picked them up one by one. It seemed that he tossed them into the great metal carrier that stuck out behind him. It hung there much as a workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder. It was the first time I realised that the Martians might want something else from beaten humanity, not only destruction. For a moment we stood still, as if turned to stone. Then we turned and ran through a gate behind us into a walled garden. There we fell into a lucky ditch, more by accident than by choice. We lay there, hardly daring to whisper to each other, until the stars were out. I suppose it was nearly eleven o’clock before we found the courage to start again. We no longer dared to go into the road. Instead we crept along hedges and through small woods. We watched keenly through the darkness for the Martians, who seemed to be all around us. He watched on the right and I watched on the left. In one place we stumbled into a burnt and blackened area, which was now cooling and covered in ash. Many dead men lay scattered there. Their heads and bodies were horribly burnt, but their legs and boots were mostly unharmed. There were dead horses too. They lay perhaps fifty feet behind a line of four torn guns and smashed gun carriages. Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and empty. Here we came upon no dead people. But the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads. In Sheen my companion suddenly said that he felt faint and thirsty. So we decided to try one of the houses. The first house we went into was a small semi-detached villa. We had a little difficulty with the window. I found nothing to eat in the place except some mouldy cheese. But there was water to drink. I also took a hatchet, which I thought would be useful for breaking into the next house. Then we crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house inside a walled garden. In the pantry of this house we found a store of food. There were two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked steak and half a ham. I give this list so exactly for a reason. As it happened, we had to live on this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of small kitchen for washing up, and there was firewood in it. There was also a cupboard. In it we found nearly a dozen bottles of burgundy, tins of soup and salmon, and two tins of biscuits. We sat in the kitchen next door in the dark, because we did not dare to strike a light. We ate bread and ham, and we drank beer out of the same bottle. The curate was still nervous and restless. Now, strangely enough, he wanted to push on. I was telling him to eat and keep up his strength. Then the thing happened that was to make us prisoners. “It can’t be midnight yet,” I said. Then came a blinding flash of bright green light. Everything in the kitchen jumped out, clear to see in green and black, and then it disappeared again. After that came a shock and a noise like nothing I have heard before or since. Almost at the same moment there came a thud behind me and a clash of glass. All around us there was a crash and rattle of falling stones and bricks. The plaster of the ceiling fell down on us and broke into many pieces on our heads. I was thrown headfirst across the floor against the handle of the oven, and I was knocked senseless. The curate told me that I was unconscious for a long time. When I came back to my senses, we were in darkness again. He was dabbing water over me. His face was wet, as I found out later, with blood from a cut on his forehead. For some time I could not remember what had happened. Then things came back to me slowly. I began to feel a painful bruise on the side of my head. “Are you better?” the curate asked in a whisper. At last I answered him. I sat up. “Don’t move,” he said. “The floor is covered with smashed plates and cups from the dresser. You can’t possibly move without making a noise. And I think *they* are outside.” We both sat very silent, so that we could hardly hear each other breathing. Everything seemed deadly still. But once something near us slid down with a rumbling sound. It was some plaster or broken brickwork. Outside, and very near, there was a metallic rattle that came and went. “That!” said the curate, when it happened again a little later. “Yes,” I said. “But what is it?” “A Martian!” said the curate. I listened again. “It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said. For a time I was inclined to think that one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the house. I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton Church. Our situation was very strange and hard to understand. So for three or four hours, until the dawn came, we hardly moved. Then the light came in. It did not come through the window, which stayed black. It came through a three-cornered hole in the wall behind us, between a beam and a heap of broken bricks. Now, for the first time, we saw the inside of the kitchen in the grey light. A mass of garden earth had burst in through the window. It had flowed over the table where we had been sitting, and it lay around our feet. Outside, the soil was piled high against the house. At the top of the window frame we could see a drainpipe that had been torn out of the ground. The floor was covered with smashed pots and pans. The end of the kitchen nearest the rest of the house was broken in. Daylight shone in there, so it was clear that most of the house had fallen down. In sharp contrast to this ruin stood the neat dresser. It was painted pale green, as was the fashion. Below it stood a number of copper and tin pots. The wallpaper was made to look like blue and white tiles. A couple of coloured pictures from newspapers fluttered on the walls above the kitchen stove. As the dawn grew clearer, we saw something through the gap in the wall. It was the body of a Martian. I suppose it was standing guard over the cylinder, which was still glowing. At that sight we crawled very carefully out of the half-dark kitchen into the darkness of the scullery. Suddenly I understood what had really happened. “The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars, has struck this house and buried us under the ruins!” For a time the curate was silent. Then he whispered: “God have mercy upon us!” Soon I heard him crying softly to himself. Apart from that sound we lay quite still in the scullery. I hardly dared to breathe. I sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of the kitchen door. I could just see the curate’s face, a dim oval shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside a metallic hammering began, then a violent hooting. Then, after a quiet time, came a hissing like the hissing of an engine. We could not tell what most of these noises were. They went on, stopping and starting, and they seemed to grow in number as time passed. Soon a regular thudding began, with a shaking that made everything around us tremble. The pots in the pantry rang and moved. This went on and on. Once the light was blocked out, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became completely dark. We must have crouched there for many hours, silent and shivering, until we were too tired to listen. . . . At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I believe we must have spent most of a day before I woke. My hunger was suddenly so strong that it made me act. I told the curate that I was going to look for food. I felt my way towards the pantry. He did not answer me. But as soon as I began eating, the faint noise I made woke him up. I heard him crawling after me. ### Glossary - **curate**: an assistant priest in a church - **mourning**: feeling very sad because someone has died - **box room**: a small room at the top of a house for storing boxes and bags - **superheated steam**: steam that is much hotter than boiling water - **scalded**: burnt by very hot water or steam - **Pompeii**: an old Roman town that was buried under ash from a volcano - **semi-detached villa**: a house that is joined to one other house on one side - **hatchet**: a small axe - **pantry**: a small room for storing food - **burgundy**: a kind of red wine from France - **dresser**: a kitchen cupboard with shelves for plates and cups - **scullery**: a small room next to a kitchen for washing dishes ## II. What We Saw from the Ruined House After we had eaten, we crept back to the scullery. There I must have fallen asleep again, because when I looked round a little later, I was alone. The thudding and shaking went on and on, and it was very tiring. I whispered for the curate several times. At last I felt my way to the door of the kitchen. It was still daylight. I saw him across the room, lying against the three-cornered hole that looked out on the Martians. His shoulders were hunched up, so his head was hidden from me. I could hear a number of noises, almost like the noises in an engine shed. The place rocked with that beating thud. Through the hole in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold. I could also see the warm blue of a calm evening sky. For a minute or so I stayed there watching the curate. Then I moved forward. I crouched low and stepped with great care among the broken plates and cups on the floor. I touched the curate’s leg. He jumped so violently that a mass of plaster slid down outside and fell with a loud crash. I gripped his arm, because I was afraid he might cry out. For a long time we crouched there without moving. Then I turned to see how much of our protecting wall was left. The falling plaster had left a narrow, upright gap in the rubble. I raised myself carefully across a beam. Then I could look out of this gap. Only the night before, there had been a quiet suburban road out there. The change that we saw was enormous. The fifth cylinder must have fallen right in the middle of the first house we had visited. The building had disappeared. The blow had completely smashed it, crushed it to powder and scattered it. The cylinder now lay far below the old foundations. It lay deep in a hole that was already much larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round it had “splashed” under that terrible blow. “Splashed” is the only word for it. It lay in high heaps that hid the nearby houses. It had behaved just like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. Our house had fallen backwards. The front part had been completely destroyed, even on the ground floor. By chance the kitchen and scullery had escaped. Now they were buried under soil and ruins. Tons of earth closed them in on every side except the side towards the cylinder. On that side we were hanging on the very edge of the great round pit. The Martians were busy making it. The heavy beating sound was clearly just behind us. Again and again a bright green vapour rose like a veil across our peephole. The cylinder was already open in the centre of the pit. On the far edge of the pit stood one of the great fighting-machines. Its Martian had left it. It stood stiff and tall against the evening sky, among the smashed bushes and heaps of gravel. At first I hardly noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it was easier to describe them first. This was because of an extraordinary shining machine that was busy in the hole. It was also because of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped earth near it. It was certainly the machine that held my attention first. It was one of those complicated structures that have since been called handling-machines. The study of them has already given a huge push to inventions on earth. When I first understood what I was seeing, it looked like a sort of metal spider. It had five jointed, quick legs. Around its body it had a great number of jointed levers and bars, and tentacles that reached and gripped. Most of its arms were pulled in. But with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates and bars. These had lined the cylinder and probably made its walls stronger. As it took them out, it lifted them and put them down on a flat piece of ground behind it. Its movements were so fast, complex and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine. I did not, although it shone like metal. The fighting-machines moved in a wonderfully lifelike and well-controlled way. But they were nothing compared with this. Some people have never seen these machines. They only have the poor pictures of artists, or the imperfect descriptions of eye-witnesses like me. Such people can hardly imagine how alive the machines seemed. I remember especially the pictures in one of the first pamphlets. It told the story of the war from beginning to end. The artist had clearly looked quickly at one of the fighting-machines, and his knowledge stopped there. He drew them as stiff tripods, leaning to one side. They had no flexibility or delicacy, and they all looked the same in a way that was quite misleading. The pamphlet with these pictures was very popular. I mention them here only to warn the reader against the idea they may have given. They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. In my opinion the pamphlet would have been much better without them. At first, as I say, the handling-machine did not seem to me like a machine. It seemed like a crab-like creature with a shining skin. The Martian who controlled it moved it with his delicate tentacles. He seemed to be simply the crab’s brain. But then I noticed that its grey-brown, shiny, leathery skin was like the skin of the other sprawling bodies beyond. Then I understood the true nature of this clever workman. With that, my interest moved to those other creatures, the real Martians. I had already seen them for a short time. My first sickness and disgust no longer stopped me from watching them. Also, I was hidden and still, and I did not need to act in a hurry. They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures that anyone could imagine. They were huge round bodies, or rather heads, about four feet across. Each body had a face in front. This face had no nostrils. In fact, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell. But it had a pair of very large dark eyes, and just below them a kind of fleshy beak. I hardly know what to call it, head or body. At the back of it there was a single tight surface like a drum. Scientists have since found that this drum was an ear. But it must have been almost useless in our thick air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen thin tentacles, almost like whips. They were arranged in two bunches of eight. The famous anatomist Professor Howes has since given these bunches a good name: the *hands*. Even when I first saw these Martians, they seemed to be trying to raise themselves on these hands. But of course this was impossible, because they weighed much more on earth. There is reason to think that on Mars they may have walked on them quite easily. Here I may say that the inside of their bodies was almost as simple. Dissection has since shown this. Most of the body was brain. It sent enormous nerves to the eyes, the ear and the tentacles they used for touching. Besides this, there were the large lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its blood vessels. Our thicker air and stronger gravity made breathing hard for them. This was only too clear from the jerking movements of their outer skin. And that was all the Martians had inside them. It may seem strange to a human being, but the Martians had no system of digestion at all. In us, the complicated organs of digestion make up most of our bodies. They were heads, only heads. They had no guts at all. They did not eat, and so of course they did not digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and they *injected* it into their own veins. I have seen this done myself, as I will tell in its place. I may seem too sensitive, but I cannot bring myself to describe it. I could not even bear to go on watching it. It is enough to say this. They took blood from an animal that was still alive, in most cases from a human being. They ran it straight into a tube in their own body with a little pipette. . . . The very idea of this is surely horribly disgusting to us. But at the same time, I think we should remember something. Our habit of eating meat would seem just as disgusting to an intelligent rabbit. The bodily advantages of injecting blood cannot be denied. Think of the huge amount of human time and energy that eating and digesting use up. Half of our bodies is made of glands, tubes and organs. Their work is to turn many different kinds of food into blood. Digestion and its effects on our nerves take away our strength and colour our thoughts. Men are happy or unhappy because their livers are healthy or unhealthy, or because their stomachs work well or badly. But the Martians were lifted above all these changes of mood and feeling that come from the body. They clearly preferred men as their food. This is partly explained by the remains of the victims they had brought with them from Mars as food. Some dried-up remains of these creatures have fallen into human hands. Judging from them, these creatures walked on two legs. They had thin, weak skeletons made of a glassy, stony material, almost like the skeletons of some sea sponges. Their muscles were weak. They stood about six feet high, and they had round, upright heads and large eyes in hard, stony sockets. Two or three of them seem to have been brought in each cylinder. All of them were killed before the cylinders reached earth. That was just as well for them. If they had only tried to stand up on our planet, every bone in their bodies would have broken. While I am describing all this, I may add some further details here. Not all of them were clear to us at the time. But they will help the reader who does not know them to form a clearer picture of these horrible creatures. In three other ways their bodies were strangely different from ours. They did not sleep, just as the heart of a man does not sleep. They had no large system of muscles that needed to rest and recover. So this regular shutting down was unknown to them. It seems that they felt little or no tiredness. On earth they could never move without effort, and yet they kept working to the very end. In twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work. Perhaps the same is true of ants, even on earth. Next, the Martians had no sex at all. This seems wonderful in a world where almost every creature is male or female. So they had none of the wild feelings that come from the difference between men and women. A young Martian was really born on earth during the war. Nobody can doubt this now. It was found attached to its parent, partly *budded* off. It was just like the way young lily bulbs bud off, or like the young animals of the fresh-water polyp. In man and in all the higher animals on earth, this way of producing young has disappeared. But even on this earth it was surely the first, oldest method. Among the lower animals, the two ways exist side by side. This is true even of the Tunicates, the close cousins of animals with backbones. But in the end the sexual method completely took the place of the other one. On Mars, however, it seems that just the opposite happened. It is worth noting something here. A certain writer of ideas, with a half-scientific reputation, wrote long before the Martian invasion. He predicted that man would finally have a shape quite like the real Martian one. His prophecy appeared, I remember, in November or December 1893. It was in a paper that died long ago, the *Pall Mall Budget*. I also remember a cartoon about it in a magazine of the time before the Martians, called *Punch*. He wrote in a silly, joking tone. He said that better and better machines must in the end replace arms and legs. Better chemical methods would replace digestion. He said that hair, the outer nose, teeth, ears and chin were no longer necessary parts of a human being. Natural selection would make them grow smaller and smaller over the coming ages. Only the brain would remain truly necessary. Only one other part of the body had a strong reason to survive. That was the hand, “teacher and agent of the brain.” While the rest of the body grew smaller, the hands would grow larger. There is many a true word written as a joke. In the Martians we can see, without any doubt, that this really happened. The mind had pushed down the animal side of the body. I find it quite believable that the Martians may come from beings not unlike us. Over a long time their brains and hands grew. At last the hands became the two bunches of delicate tentacles. And all this happened at the cost of the rest of the body. Without the body, the brain would of course become just a selfish mind. It would have none of the feelings that lie under human life. The last important way in which their bodies differed from ours might seem very small. Micro-organisms cause so much disease and pain on earth. But either they have never appeared on Mars, or Martian science got rid of them ages ago. A hundred diseases never enter their lives. These include all the fevers and infections of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and other illnesses like them. I am speaking of the differences between life on Mars and life on earth. So I may mention the strange case of the red weed here. It seems that the plants on Mars are not mostly green. Instead they are a bright blood-red colour. At any rate, the Martians brought seeds with them, by plan or by accident. In every case these seeds grew into red plants. But only the plant that people call the red weed managed to compete with the plants of earth. The red creeper lived only a short time, and few people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the red weed grew with astonishing strength and richness. It spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment. Its branches, like those of a cactus, made a deep red fringe round the edges of our three-cornered window. Later I found it spread all over the country, especially wherever there was a stream of water. The Martians had what seems to have been an organ for hearing. It was a single round drum at the back of the head-body. Their eyes could see almost the same range as ours. But according to Philips, blue and violet looked black to them. Most people think that they talked to each other by sounds and by movements of their tentacles. This is said, for example, in the pamphlet I have already mentioned. It is a clever pamphlet, but it was written in a hurry. Clearly the writer never saw the Martians in action himself. So far it has been the main source of information about them. Now, no living human being saw as much of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit for an accident, but it is a fact. I watched them closely again and again. I have seen four, five and once six of them doing very complicated work together. They worked slowly, without any sound or movement of signs. Their strange hooting always came before feeding. It did not go up or down. I believe it was not a signal at all. It was just air breathed out before they began to suck. I can claim at least a basic knowledge of psychology. And on this question I am quite sure, as sure as I am of anything. The Martians exchanged thoughts directly, without anything physical between them. I became sure of this although I had strong opinions against it before. Before the Martian invasion I had written rather strongly against the theory of telepathy. An odd reader here and there may remember it. The Martians wore no clothes. Their ideas of decoration and of proper behaviour must have been different from ours. They clearly felt changes of temperature much less than we do. And changes of pressure do not seem to have harmed their health seriously. Yet although they wore no clothes, their great superiority over man lay in other things they added to their bodies. Think of us men, with our bicycles and road-skates, our Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so on. We are only at the beginning of the development that the Martians have finished. They have become really just brains. They wear different bodies for different needs, just as men wear suits of clothes. Or just as a man takes a bicycle when he is in a hurry, or an umbrella when it rains. Of all their machines, perhaps one thing is most wonderful to a man. Almost all human machines are based on the *wheel*. But in theirs the wheel is missing. Among all the things they brought to earth, there is no sign that they used wheels. One would at least expect wheels for moving about. And it is interesting to note that even on this earth, Nature has never found the wheel. Or perhaps Nature has preferred other ways to develop. Perhaps the Martians did not know about the wheel, which is unbelievable. Or perhaps they chose not to use it. In any case, their machines also make very little use of fixed pivots, with parts turning round them in circles. Almost all the joints of their machines have a complicated system of sliding parts. These move over small but beautifully curved bearings. And while I am speaking of these details, there is another remarkable thing. The long levers of their machines are worked in most cases by a sort of false muscle. It is made of disks in an elastic covering. When an electric current passes through them, the disks are drawn tightly and powerfully together. In this way the machines moved strangely like animals, which was so striking and disturbing to a human watcher. The crab-like handling-machine was full of these false muscles. It was the one I watched unpacking the cylinder when I first peeped out of the slit. It seemed far more alive than the real Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light. They were panting, moving their useless tentacles and stirring weakly after their huge journey across space. I was still watching their slow movements in the sunlight. I was noting every strange detail of their shape. Then the curate reminded me that he was there, by pulling violently at my arm. I turned and saw a scowling face and silent lips that said a great deal. He wanted the slit. Only one of us could look through it at a time. So I had to stop watching them for a while, and he enjoyed that privilege. Then I looked again. The busy handling-machine had already put together several of the pieces it had taken out of the cylinder. They made a shape that was clearly like its own. And down on the left a busy little digging machine had come into view. It was sending out jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit. It dug and piled up the earth in a careful and orderly way. This was what had caused the regular beating noise. It had also caused the steady shocks that kept our ruined shelter shaking. It piped and whistled as it worked. As far as I could see, there was no Martian directing it at all. ### Glossary - **suburban**: in the area of houses at the edge of a big town - **vapour**: a cloud of very small drops of gas or liquid in the air - **pamphlet**: a thin book with a paper cover - **Dutch doll**: a simple wooden toy doll with stiff arms and legs - **anatomist**: a scientist who studies the inside of bodies - **dissection**: cutting up a dead body to study it - **injected**: put a liquid into the body through a thin tube or needle - **pipette**: a thin glass tube for moving small amounts of liquid - **budded**: grown out of the parent like a new part of a plant - **Tunicates**: small, simple sea animals - **telepathy**: talking from mind to mind without words - **soaring-machines**: early flying machines without engines, like gliders ## III. The Days of Imprisonment A second fighting-machine arrived, and it drove us from our peephole into the scullery. We were afraid that the Martian, from high up, might see down to us behind our wall. Later we began to feel less in danger from their eyes. To an eye outside in the dazzling sunlight, our hiding place must have looked completely black. But at first, the smallest sign that something was coming near sent us back into the scullery. Our hearts were beating hard. The danger we ran was terrible. Yet both of us found the pull of looking out too strong to resist. I remember now, with a kind of wonder, how we were placed. We were in endless danger, between starvation and a still more terrible death. And yet we could still fight bitterly for that horrible privilege of seeing. We would race across the kitchen in a ridiculous way, torn between eagerness and the fear of making a noise. We hit each other, pushed and kicked, only a few inches from being seen. The truth is that our characters and our ways of thinking and acting could never agree. Our danger and our loneliness only made this worse. At Halliford I had already begun to hate the curate’s habit of crying out helplessly, and his stupid, stiff mind. He muttered to himself all the time. It spoiled every effort I made to think of a plan. Because we were shut up together, this grew worse and worse, and at times it drove me almost mad. He had no more self-control than a silly woman. He would weep for hours at a time. I truly believe that, to the very end, this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears did some good. And I would sit in the darkness, unable to stop thinking about him, because he kept bothering me. He ate more than I did. I told him that our only chance of life was to stay in the house. We had to stay until the Martians had finished with their pit. I told him that during that long wait a time might soon come when we would need food. But it was no use. He ate and drank whenever he felt like it, in heavy meals with long gaps between them. He slept little. As the days went by, he cared about nothing, and this made our misery and danger much greater. I hated doing it, but I had to use threats, and at last blows. That brought him to reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures. Such people have no pride. They are timid, pale and bloodless, hateful souls, full of tricks. They face neither God nor man. They do not even face themselves. It is unpleasant for me to remember and write these things. But I write them down so that my story may lack nothing. Some people have escaped the dark and terrible sides of life. They will find it easy to blame my brutality and my flash of rage in our final tragedy. They know what is wrong as well as anyone. But they do not know what tortured men may be driven to do. Others have lived under the shadow. They have gone down at last to the most basic things of life. Those people will be kinder and more forgiving. Inside, we fought our dark, dim battle of whispers, with snatched food and drink, gripping hands and blows. Outside, in the merciless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder of the Martians. Their unfamiliar routine went on in the pit. Let me go back to those first new experiences of mine. After a long time I dared to go back to the peephole. I found that more Martians had joined the newcomers. They were the riders of no fewer than three fighting-machines. These had brought some new machines with them, which stood in neat order around the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now finished. It was busy working one of the new devices that the big machine had brought. This device was shaped roughly like a milk can. Above it a pear-shaped container swung to and fro. From it a stream of white powder flowed into a round basin below. One tentacle of the handling-machine made the container swing. With two hands shaped like spades, the handling-machine dug out masses of clay. It threw them into the pear-shaped container above. Every now and then, with another arm, it opened a door in the middle part of the machine. It took out rusty and blackened clinkers. Another steel tentacle guided the powder from the basin along a ridged channel. The channel led towards some container that the mound of bluish dust hid from me. From this hidden container a little thread of green smoke rose straight up into the quiet air. As I watched, I heard a faint, musical ringing. The handling-machine pushed out a tentacle, like a telescope opening. A moment before, it had been only a short, blunt stump. It grew until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight. The bar was still bright and clean, and it shone dazzlingly. The machine put it on a growing pile of bars at the side of the pit. This clever machine worked from sunset until starlight. In that time it must have made more than a hundred such bars out of the rough clay. And the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it was higher than the side of the pit. The machines moved quickly and in complicated ways. Their masters lay still, panting and clumsy. The contrast was very sharp. For days I had to keep telling myself that the masters were really the living ones. The curate was at the slit when the first men were brought to the pit. I was sitting below, curled up, listening as hard as I could. He suddenly moved backwards. I was afraid that we had been seen, and I crouched down in a sudden fit of terror. He came sliding down the rubble and crept beside me in the darkness. He could not speak, but he waved his arms about. For a moment I shared his panic. His movements seemed to say that he was giving up the slit. After a little while my curiosity gave me courage. I got up, stepped across him and climbed up to it. At first I could see no reason for his wild behaviour. The twilight had come now, and the stars were small and faint. But the pit was lit by the flickering green fire that came from the aluminium-making. The whole scene was a flickering pattern of green lights and moving rusty-black shadows. It was strangely tiring to the eyes. Over it and through it all flew the bats, without paying any attention to it. The Martians lying on the ground could no longer be seen. The mound of blue-green powder had risen and hidden them. A fighting-machine stood across the corner of the pit, with its legs pulled in, folded and shortened. And then, through the clanging of the machinery, I seemed to hear faint human voices. At first I thought I was imagining them. I crouched there and watched this fighting-machine closely. Now, for the first time, I made sure that the hood really did hold a Martian. As the green flames rose, I could see the oily shine of his skin and the brightness of his eyes. Suddenly I heard a yell. I saw a long tentacle reach over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage on its back. Then something was lifted high against the sky. It was something that struggled violently, a black, unclear shape against the starlight. As this black object came down again, I saw by the green light that it was a man. For a moment I saw him clearly. He was a fat, red-faced, middle-aged man, well dressed. Three days before, he must have been walking about the world, a man of real importance. I could see his staring eyes, and flashes of light on his studs and watch chain. He disappeared behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking, and a long, cheerful hooting from the Martians. I slid down the rubble and struggled to my feet. I clapped my hands over my ears and ran into the scullery. The curate had been crouching silently with his arms over his head. He looked up as I passed. He cried out quite loudly because I was leaving him, and he came running after me. That night we hid in the scullery, torn between our horror and the terrible attraction of looking out. I felt an urgent need to act, but I tried in vain to think of some plan of escape. Later, during the second day, I was able to think about our position very clearly. I found that the curate was quite unable to discuss anything. This new and worst horror had taken away the last of his reason and his ability to plan. In fact he had already sunk to the level of an animal. But, as the saying goes, I gripped myself with both hands. Once I could face the facts, an idea grew in my mind. Our position was terrible, but there was still no reason for complete despair. Our best chance was that the Martians might use the pit only as a temporary camp. Or even if they kept it for good, they might not think it necessary to guard it. Then we might get a chance to escape. I also thought very carefully about digging a way out, in a direction away from the pit. But at first the chance of coming up within sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed too great. And I would have had to do all the digging myself. The curate would certainly have let me down. It was on the third day, if I remember rightly, that I saw the lad killed. It was the only time I actually saw the Martians feed. After that experience I kept away from the hole in the wall for most of a day. I went into the scullery and took off the door. Then I spent some hours digging with my hatchet, as silently as I could. But when I had made a hole about two feet deep, the loose earth fell in with a loud noise. I did not dare to go on. I lost heart, and I lay down on the scullery floor for a long time. I did not even have the spirit to move. And after that I gave up the idea of escaping by digging altogether. The Martians had made a deep impression on me. At first I had little or no hope that human efforts could defeat them and so set us free. But on the fourth or fifth night I heard a sound like heavy guns. It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine. There was still a fighting-machine standing on the far bank of the pit. There was also a handling-machine in a corner of the pit, straight below my peephole. I could not see it from there. Apart from these, the Martians had left the place. The pit was dark, except for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and patches of white moonlight. It was quite still, except for the ringing sound of the handling-machine. That night was beautifully calm. Apart from one planet, the moon seemed to have the sky to herself. I heard a dog howling. It was that familiar sound that made me listen. Then I heard, quite clearly, a booming exactly like the sound of great guns. I counted six separate reports, and after a long gap six more. And that was all. ### Glossary - **peephole**: a small hole to look through - **privilege**: a special right that only some people have - **timid**: easily frightened; not brave - **brutality**: cruel and violent behaviour - **routine**: the usual way of doing things, again and again - **clinkers**: hard, burnt lumps left after a fire - **telescope**: a long tube that can slide out to become longer - **aluminium**: a light, silver-white metal - **studs**: small buttons that fasten a man’s shirt - **watch chain**: a chain that holds a pocket watch to a man’s clothes - **sentinel**: a guard who watches - **reports**: the loud sounds of guns firing ## IV. The Death of the Curate It was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped out for the last time. Soon I found that I was alone. The curate had not stayed close to me, trying to push me away from the slit. Instead he had gone back into the scullery. A sudden thought struck me. I went back quickly and quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard the curate drinking. I grabbed in the darkness, and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy. For a few minutes we struggled. The bottle hit the floor and broke. Then I stopped and stood up. We stood there panting and threatening each other. In the end I placed myself between him and the food. I told him that I was determined to begin strict rules. I divided the food in the pantry into rations to last us ten days. I would not let him eat any more that day. In the afternoon he made a weak attempt to get at the food. I had been half asleep, but in an instant I was awake. All day and all night we sat face to face. I was weary but firm. He was weeping and complaining that he was hungry now. I know it was only a night and a day. But to me it seemed, and it still seems now, an endless length of time. So the gap between us grew wider, and at last it ended in open fighting. For two endless days we struggled in low voices and wrestling matches. At times I beat and kicked him madly. At other times I spoke kindly to him and tried to persuade him. Once I tried to bribe him with the last bottle of burgundy. I could do this because there was a rain-water pump where I could get water. But neither force nor kindness did any good. He was really beyond reason. He would not stop his attacks on the food, or his noisy talking to himself. He would not take even the most basic care to make our imprisonment bearable. Slowly I began to realise that his mind had broken down completely. I understood that my only companion in this close, sickening darkness was a madman. From some vague memories, I think that my own mind wandered at times. I had strange and horrible dreams whenever I slept. It sounds strange, but I believe that the curate’s weakness and madness helped me. They warned me and gave me strength, and they kept me sane. On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering. Nothing I could do would make him speak more quietly. “It is just, O God!” he would say, over and over again. “It is just. Let the punishment fall on me and mine. We have sinned, we have failed. There was poverty and sorrow. The poor were trodden into the dust, and I said nothing. I preached pleasant foolishness—my God, what foolishness!—when I should have stood up. I should have called on them to repent, even if I died for it. Repent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy! . . . The wine press of God!” Then he would suddenly go back to the food that I kept from him. He prayed, begged, wept and at last threatened. He began to raise his voice. I begged him not to. He saw that he had a hold on me. He threatened to shout and bring the Martians down on us. For a time that frightened me. But if I gave in at all, it would reduce our chance of escape more than I could measure. So I stood firm against him, although I was not sure that he would not do it. But that day, at any rate, he did not. Through most of the eighth and ninth days he talked, and his voice rose slowly. He made threats and he begged me. With these came a flood of half-mad, foaming repentance for his empty, false service of God. It made me pity him. Then he slept for a while. After that he began again, with new strength, so loudly that I had to make him stop. “Be still!” I begged. He rose to his knees. He had been sitting in the darkness near the copper. “I have been still too long,” he said. His voice must have reached the pit. “And now I must bear my witness. Woe to this unfaithful city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe to the people of the earth, because of the other voices of the trumpet——” “Shut up!” I said. I rose to my feet, terrified that the Martians would hear us. “For God’s sake——” “No!” shouted the curate at the top of his voice. He stood up too and stretched out his arms. “Speak! The word of the Lord is upon me!” In three strides he was at the door into the kitchen. “I must bear my witness! I go! I have waited too long already.” I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging on the wall. In a flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway across the kitchen, I had caught up with him. With one last touch of humanity, I turned the blade away and hit him with the butt. He fell headlong forward and lay stretched out on the floor. I stumbled over him and stood there panting. He lay still. Suddenly I heard a noise outside. Plaster was slipping and crashing down, and the three-cornered hole in the wall went dark. I looked up. I saw the underside of a handling-machine coming slowly across the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled among the rubble. Another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. I stood frozen, staring. Then I saw, through a kind of glass plate near the edge of the body, the face of a Martian. We may call it a face. I saw its large dark eyes peering in. And then a long metal snake of a tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole. I made myself turn. I stumbled over the curate and stopped at the scullery door. The tentacle was now some way into the room, two yards or more. It was twisting and turning this way and that, with strange, sudden movements. For a while I stood fascinated by its slow, jerky advance. Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the scullery. I was trembling violently. I could hardly stand upright. I opened the door of the coal cellar and stood there in the darkness. I stared at the faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and I listened. Had the Martian seen me? What was it doing now? Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly. Every now and then it tapped against the wall. Or it began to move again with a faint metallic ringing, like keys moving on a key ring. Then a heavy body was dragged across the kitchen floor towards the opening. I knew too well what it was. I could not stop myself. I crept to the door and peeped into the kitchen. In the triangle of bright sunlight from outside I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling-machine. It was examining the curate’s head closely. At once I thought of the mark of the blow I had given him. The Martian would guess from it that I was there. I crept back to the coal cellar and shut the door. In the darkness I began to cover myself up among the firewood and coal. I did it as well and as silently as I could. Every now and then I stopped, stiff, to hear if the Martian had pushed its tentacles through the opening again. Then the faint metallic jingle came back. I followed it slowly with my ears as it felt its way over the kitchen. Soon I heard it nearer. I thought it was in the scullery. I thought that it might not be long enough to reach me. I prayed and prayed. It passed, scraping faintly across the cellar door. There followed an age of almost unbearable waiting. Then I heard it feeling at the latch! It had found the door! The Martians understood doors! It worked at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door opened. In the darkness I could just see the thing. It was more like an elephant’s trunk than anything else. It waved towards me, touching and examining the wall, the coal, the wood and the ceiling. It was like a black worm swaying its blind head to and fro. Once it even touched the heel of my boot. I was close to screaming. I bit my hand. For a time the tentacle was silent. I could have imagined that it had gone. Then suddenly, with a click, it gripped something. I thought it had me! It seemed to go out of the cellar again. For a minute I was not sure. It seemed that it had taken a lump of coal to examine. I took the chance to move my position a little, because my body had become stiff and sore. Then I listened. I whispered passionate prayers for safety. Then I heard the slow, careful sound creeping towards me again. Slowly, slowly it came nearer, scratching against the walls and tapping the furniture. While I was still unsure, it knocked sharply against the cellar door and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry. The biscuit tins rattled and a bottle smashed. Then came a heavy bump against the cellar door. Then there was silence, which turned into endless waiting. Had it gone? At last I decided that it had. It did not come into the scullery again. But all the tenth day I lay in the close darkness, buried among coal and firewood. I did not even dare to crawl out for a drink, though I badly wanted one. It was the eleventh day before I dared to leave my safe place. ### Glossary - **rations**: fixed amounts of food for each person or each day - **bribe**: to offer someone something to make them do what you want - **repent**: to feel sorry for your sins and decide to change - **oppressors**: people who treat others cruelly and unfairly - **wine press**: a machine that crushes grapes; in the Bible, a picture of God’s anger - **copper**: a large metal pot for boiling water or washing clothes - **woe**: great sorrow; “woe to” is an old way of warning people of trouble - **bear my witness**: speak publicly about what I believe to be true - **meat chopper**: a heavy knife for cutting meat - **butt**: the thick, blunt end of a tool - **Briareus**: a giant with a hundred arms in Greek stories - **latch**: a small bar that keeps a door shut ## V. The Stillness Before I went into the pantry, I did one thing first. I fastened the door between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty. Every scrap of food had gone. It seemed that the Martian had taken it all on the day before. When I found this, I despaired for the first time. I had no food, and no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day. At first my mouth and throat were very dry, and I could feel my strength slowly going. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, sad and miserable. My mind kept turning to food. I thought I had become deaf. The noises of movement that I was used to hearing from the pit had stopped completely. I did not feel strong enough to crawl silently to the peephole, or I would have gone there. On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that I took the risk of alarming the Martians. I went to work on the creaking rain-water pump that stood by the sink. I got a couple of glasses of blackened, dirty rainwater. This made me feel much better. It also made me bolder, because no curious tentacle followed the noise of my pumping. During these days I thought a lot about the curate and the way he died. My thoughts wandered and never reached an end. On the thirteenth day I drank some more water. I dozed, and I had broken thoughts about eating and about vague, impossible plans of escape. Whenever I dozed, I dreamt of horrible ghosts, of the death of the curate, or of rich dinners. But asleep or awake, I felt a sharp pain that made me drink again and again. The light that came into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my confused mind it seemed the colour of blood. On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen. I was surprised. The leaves of the red weed had grown right across the hole in the wall. They had turned the half-light of the place into a deep red gloom. It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a strange but familiar set of sounds in the kitchen. I listened, and I knew it was the sniffing and scratching of a dog. I went into the kitchen. There I saw a dog’s nose peering in through a gap among the red leaves. This surprised me very much. When he smelt me, he gave a short bark. If I could get him to come in quietly, I thought, I might be able to kill and eat him. In any case it would be wise to kill him. Otherwise his movements might attract the attention of the Martians. I crept forward, saying “Good dog!” very softly. But he suddenly pulled his head back and disappeared. I listened. I was not deaf, but the pit was certainly still. I heard a sound like the flutter of a bird’s wings, and a hoarse croaking, but that was all. For a long while I lay close to the peephole. But I did not dare to push aside the red plants that covered it. Once or twice I heard a faint pitter-patter far below me. It was like the feet of the dog going here and there on the sand. And there were more sounds like birds, but that was all. At last the silence gave me courage, and I looked out. There was not a living thing in the pit, except in one corner. There a great crowd of crows hopped about. They fought over the skeletons of the dead that the Martians had fed on. I stared about me, and I could hardly believe my eyes. All the machinery had gone. There was the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner, and some bars of aluminium in another. There were the black birds and the skeletons of the dead. Apart from these, the place was just an empty round pit in the sand. Slowly I pushed myself out through the red weed and stood on the mound of rubble. I could see in every direction except behind me, to the north. There were no Martians to be seen, and no sign of Martians. The pit dropped straight down from my feet. But a little way along, the rubble made a slope that I could climb to the top of the ruins. My chance of escape had come. I began to tremble. I hesitated for some time. Then a sudden wave of desperate courage came over me. My heart was beating violently. I scrambled to the top of the mound where I had been buried for so long. I looked about again. To the north, too, there was no Martian in sight. I had last seen this part of Sheen in daylight. Then it had been a long, untidy street of comfortable white and red houses. There had been plenty of shady trees between them. Now I stood on a mound of smashed bricks, clay and gravel. A great number of red plants, shaped like cactuses, spread over it. They were knee-high, and there was not a single plant of earth among them to fight them for the ground. The trees near me were dead and brown. But further away, a network of red threads was climbing up the trunks that were still alive. The houses nearby had all been wrecked, but none had been burned. Their walls still stood, sometimes up to the second floor, with smashed windows and broken doors. The red weed grew wildly in their roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows fighting over its rubbish. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. Far away I saw a thin, hungry-looking cat creeping low along a wall. But there was no trace of men anywhere. After my long imprisonment, the day seemed dazzlingly bright, and the sky was a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed swaying softly. It covered every scrap of empty ground. And oh! the sweetness of the air! ### Glossary - **pantry**: a small room for storing food - **scullery**: a small room next to a kitchen for washing dishes - **despaired**: lost all hope - **rain-water pump**: a machine worked by hand that brings up rainwater stored in a tank - **dozed**: slept lightly for a short time - **gloom**: near darkness - **peering**: looking closely, as if trying to see something - **peephole**: a small hole to look through - **rubble**: broken stones and bricks from a fallen building - **skeletons**: all the bones of dead bodies - **scrambled**: climbed quickly and with difficulty, using hands and feet - **cactuses**: desert plants with thick stems and sharp points ## VI. The Work of Fifteen Days For some time I stood on the mound. I was shaking, and I did not think about my safety. Down in that foul hole, I had thought only about our safety from moment to moment. I had not understood what was happening to the world. I had not expected this startling sight of strange things. I had expected to see Sheen in ruins. Instead, all around me lay a weird, wild landscape, like the landscape of another planet. For that moment I felt something that men do not usually feel. But the poor animals that we rule over know this feeling only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel when it comes back to its burrow. Suddenly it finds a dozen busy navvies there, digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first hint of an idea. Soon it grew quite clear in my mind, and it weighed on me for many days. I felt that I had been pushed off my throne. I was sure that I was no longer a master. I was an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. We would have to live as the animals live: to hide and watch, to run and hide. Man’s power, and the fear that man had caused in other creatures, had passed away. But as soon as I had understood this strange new feeling, it passed. Now my strongest feeling was hunger, after my long and miserable time without food. Away from the pit, beyond a wall covered in red, I saw a piece of garden ground. It was not buried. This gave me an idea. I went through the red weed. It came up to my knees, and sometimes up to my neck. The weed was so thick that it made me feel safely hidden. The wall was about six feet high. I tried to climb it, but I could not lift my feet to the top. So I went along beside it and came to a corner with some rockwork. This helped me get to the top, and I tumbled down into the garden I wanted so badly. Here I found some young onions, two gladiolus bulbs and a lot of small, unripe carrots. I took them all. Then I climbed over a ruined wall and went on my way towards Kew. I walked through scarlet and crimson trees. It was like walking along an avenue of gigantic drops of blood. I had two ideas in my head. I wanted to get more food. And I wanted to limp away from this cursed, unearthly place around the pit. I wanted to go as soon and as far as my strength allowed. Some way further on, in a grassy place, I found a group of mushrooms, and I ate them too. Then I came to a brown sheet of shallow, flowing water, where there used to be meadows. These little bits of food only made my hunger sharper. At first I was surprised to see a flood in a hot, dry summer. But later I found out that the red weed had caused it. It grew wildly, like a plant in the tropics. As soon as this strange plant met water, it grew gigantic. It produced seeds in enormous numbers. Its seeds simply poured down into the water of the Wey and the Thames. Its huge water leaves grew very fast and soon choked both those rivers. At Putney, as I saw later, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed. At Richmond, too, the Thames water poured across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham in a broad, shallow stream. As the water spread, the weed followed it. For a time the ruined villas of the Thames valley were lost in this red swamp. I explored the edge of it. The swamp hid much of the damage that the Martians had done. In the end the red weed died almost as quickly as it had spread. Soon a disease attacked it and ate it away. People believe that certain bacteria caused this disease. Now, through natural selection, all plants on Earth have gained the power to resist diseases caused by bacteria. They never die from them without a hard struggle. But the red weed rotted like a thing that was already dead. The leaves turned white, and then they dried up and became brittle. They broke off at the lightest touch. The waters that had helped them grow so fast at first carried the last pieces of them out to sea. When I came to this water, of course, the first thing I did was to drink. I drank a great deal. Then, on a sudden impulse, I chewed some leaves of the red weed. But they were watery and had a sickly taste, like metal. The water was shallow enough for me to wade through it safely. The red weed caught at my feet a little. But the flood clearly got deeper towards the river, so I turned back towards Mortlake. Here and there I saw the ruins of villas, fences and lamps. They helped me to follow the road. And so after a while I got out of the flood water. I went up the hill towards Roehampton and came out on Putney Common. Here the scenery changed. It was no longer strange and unfamiliar. Now I saw the wreckage of familiar things. Some patches of ground looked as if a cyclone had passed over them. Then, a few dozen yards further on, I came upon places that were not touched at all. There were houses with their blinds neatly drawn and their doors closed. They looked as if the owners had left them for a day. Or it seemed that the people inside were asleep. There was less red weed here. The tall trees along the lane had no red creeper on them. I hunted for food among the trees, but I found nothing. I also broke into a couple of silent houses. But other people had already broken into them and taken everything. I was very weak, and too tired to go on. So I rested in some bushes for the rest of the daylight. All this time I saw no human beings and no signs of the Martians. I met a couple of hungry-looking dogs. I tried to go near them, but both hurried away from me in a wide curve. Near Roehampton I had seen two human skeletons. They were not bodies, but skeletons, picked clean. In the wood near me I found the crushed, scattered bones of several cats and rabbits. There was also the skull of a sheep. I chewed some of these bones, but there was nothing on them to eat. After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney. I think the Heat-Ray must have been used there for some reason. In a garden beyond Roehampton I found a lot of young potatoes. They were enough to stop my hunger. From this garden you could look down on Putney and the river. In the dusk the place looked strangely lonely and empty. There were blackened trees and blackened, empty ruins. Down the hill lay the sheets of the flooded river, coloured red by the weed. And over everything there was silence. I felt a terror that I cannot describe. That terrible change had come so quickly. For a time I believed that mankind had been wiped out. I thought that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Close to the top of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton. Its arms had been pulled off and lay several yards from the rest of the body. As I went on, I felt more and more sure of one thing. In this part of the world, the extermination of mankind was already complete. Only a few stragglers like me were left. The Martians, I thought, had gone on to look for food somewhere else. They had left the country empty and ruined. Perhaps even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris. Or perhaps they had gone north. ### Glossary - **mound**: a small hill or pile of earth, stones or broken bricks - **burrow**: a hole in the ground where a rabbit lives - **navvies**: workers who dig roads, railways and foundations - **under the Martian heel**: ruled and pressed down by the Martians, like something under a boot - **gladiolus bulbs**: the round roots of a tall garden flower, which can be eaten in need - **avenue**: a road or path with a line of trees on each side - **natural selection**: the way living things slowly change, because the strongest ones survive and have young - **brittle**: hard and dry, so that it breaks easily - **wade**: to walk through water - **cyclone**: a very strong, violent storm with winds that turn round and round - **extermination**: the killing of every one of a group - **stragglers**: a few people left behind after the others have gone ## VII. The Man on Putney Hill I spent that night in the inn at the top of Putney Hill. For the first time since my flight to Leatherhead, I slept in a made bed. I will not tell you about all the trouble I had breaking into that house. Afterwards I found that the front door had not even been locked. Nor will I tell you how I searched every room for food. I was close to despair. Then I came to what seemed to be a servant’s bedroom. There I found a crust that rats had chewed, and two tins of pineapple. Someone had already searched the place and emptied it. Later, in the bar, I found some biscuits and sandwiches that the searchers had missed. I could not eat the sandwiches, because they were too rotten. But the biscuits stopped my hunger, and they filled my pockets too. I lit no lamps. I was afraid that some Martian might come through that part of London in the night, hunting for food. Before I went to bed, I felt restless for a while. I walked from window to window and looked out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I lay in bed, I found that I was thinking clearly, one thought after another. I could not remember doing this since my last argument with the curate. During all the time in between, my mind had been in a poor state. Vague feelings had hurried after each other, or I had simply taken things in, like a stupid animal. But in the night my brain grew clear again. I suppose the food I had eaten made it stronger. And I thought. Three things fought for a place in my mind. They were the killing of the curate, where the Martians were, and what might have happened to my wife. When I remembered the first, I felt no horror and no regret. I saw it simply as a thing that had been done. It was a very unpleasant memory, but I did not feel guilty about it. I saw myself then as I see myself now. Step by step I had been driven towards that quick blow. A chain of accidents had led to it, and it could not have ended differently. I did not condemn myself. And yet the memory stayed with me. It did not change or move on, but it haunted me. In the silence of the night, I felt that God was near. That feeling sometimes comes in stillness and darkness. And there I stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of anger and fear. I went back over everything we had said to each other. I began from the moment I found him crouching beside me. He had paid no attention to my thirst. He had pointed to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We had never been able to work together. But cruel chance had not cared about that. If I had seen what was coming, I would have left him at Halliford. But I did not see it coming. And a crime is when you see what is coming, and do it anyway. I write this down as I have written all this story down, as it happened. There were no witnesses. I could have hidden all these things. But I have written it down, and the reader must judge as he wishes. With an effort, I put aside that picture of a body lying on the floor. Then I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. About the Martians I knew nothing. I could imagine a hundred things. And sadly, I could imagine a hundred things about my wife too. Suddenly that night became terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring into the dark. I found myself praying that the Heat-Ray had struck her dead suddenly, without pain. I had not prayed since the night I came back from Leatherhead. I had said prayers when I was in great danger, it is true. They were like magic words, the way that heathens mutter charms. But now I truly prayed. I begged steadily and calmly, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! And strangest of all was this. As soon as dawn came, I crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hole. And I had just been talking with God! I was a creature not much bigger than a rat. I was a lower animal, a thing that our masters could hunt and kill whenever they liked. Perhaps the animals also prayed to God with confidence. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity. It has taught us pity for those poor creatures without reason that suffer under our rule. The morning was bright and fine. The eastern sky glowed pink, and little golden clouds lay across it. A road runs from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon. On it there were poor remains of the great crowd that had fled in panic. That crowd must have poured towards London on the Sunday night after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, painted on it. One wheel was smashed, and someone had left a tin trunk behind. A straw hat was trampled into the mud, which was now hard. At the top of West Hill there was a lot of glass around an overturned water trough. There was blood on the glass. I moved slowly, without energy, and my plans were very vague. I had an idea of going to Leatherhead. But I knew that I had very little chance of finding my wife there. Unless death had come upon them suddenly, she and my cousins would have fled from there. But I thought I might find out there where the people of Surrey had fled to. I knew I wanted to find my wife. My heart ached for her and for the world of men. But I had no clear idea how to find her. Now I also felt my deep loneliness very sharply. From the corner I went to the edge of Wimbledon Common, hidden by a thicket of trees and bushes. The common stretched wide and far. That dark open land was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom. I saw no red weed. I moved slowly along the edge of the open ground, not sure what to do. Then the sun rose and filled everything with light and life. In a swampy place among the trees, I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs. I stopped to look at them. Their strong will to live taught me a lesson. Then I had a strange feeling that I was being watched. I turned round quickly and saw something crouching in a clump of bushes. I stood and looked at it. I took a step towards it. It rose up and became a man with a cutlass in his hand. I went slowly closer. He stood silent and still, watching me. As I came nearer, I saw that his clothes were as dusty and filthy as mine. In fact, he looked as if someone had dragged him through a drain under a road. Closer still, I could see the green slime of ditches. It was mixed with pale, dry clay and shiny black patches of coal. His black hair hung over his eyes. His face was dark, dirty and thin, so at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut across the lower part of his face. “Stop!” he cried, when I was ten yards from him. I stopped. His voice was hoarse. “Where do you come from?” he said. I thought for a moment, looking at him. “I come from Mortlake,” I said. “I was buried near the pit that the Martians made around their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped.” “There is no food around here,” he said. “This is my country. All this hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?” I answered slowly. “I don’t know,” I said. “I have been buried in the ruins of a house for thirteen or fourteen days. I don’t know what has happened.” He looked at me doubtfully. Then he started, and looked at me with a different expression. “I don’t want to stay around here,” I said. “I think I shall go to Leatherhead, because my wife was there.” He suddenly pointed his finger at me. “It is you,” he said, “the man from Woking. And you weren’t killed at Weybridge?” I recognised him at the same moment. “You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.” “Good luck!” he said. “We are lucky ones! Fancy *you*!” He held out a hand, and I took it. “I crawled up a drain,” he said. “But they didn’t kill everyone. And after they went away, I got off across the fields towards Walton. But—— It’s not sixteen days altogether—and your hair is grey.” Suddenly he looked over his shoulder. “Only a rook,” he said. “These days you learn that birds have shadows. This is a bit open. Let’s crawl under those bushes and talk.” “Have you seen any Martians?” I said. “Since I crawled out——” “They’ve gone away across London,” he said. “I guess they’ve got a bigger camp there. At night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky is alive with their lights. It’s like a great city, and in the glare you can just see them moving. By daylight you can’t. But nearer—I haven’t seen them—” (he counted on his fingers) “for five days. Then I saw a couple over Hammersmith way, carrying something big. And the night before last”—he stopped, and then spoke in a serious voice—“it was just lights. But there was something up in the air. I believe they’ve built a flying-machine, and they’re learning to fly.” I stopped on my hands and knees, because we had come to the bushes. “Fly!” “Yes,” he said, “fly.” I went on into a little shelter among the bushes and sat down. “It is all over with humanity,” I said. “If they can do that, they will simply go round the world.” He nodded. “They will. But—— It will make things a bit easier over here. And besides——” He looked at me. “Aren’t you sure that it *is* all over with humanity? I am. We’re down; we’re beat.” I stared at him. It may seem strange, but I had not reached this fact myself. Yet it was perfectly clear as soon as he said it. I had still held on to a vague hope. Or rather, I had kept a habit of mind that I had had all my life. He said his words again, “We’re beat.” He said them with complete certainty. “It’s all over,” he said. “They’ve lost *one*—just *one*. And they’ve got a firm footing here, and they’ve crippled the greatest power in the world. They’ve walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an accident. And these are only the first ones. They kept on coming. These green stars—I haven’t seen any for five or six days. But I’ve no doubt they’re falling somewhere every night. Nothing can be done. We’re under! We’re beat!” I gave him no answer. I sat staring in front of me. I tried in vain to think of some argument against him. “This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any more than there’s a war between men and ants.” Suddenly I remembered the night in the observatory. “After the tenth shot they fired no more—at least, until the first cylinder came.” “How do you know?” said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought about it. “Something wrong with the gun,” he said. “But what if there is? They’ll get it right again. And even if there’s a delay, how can it change the end? It’s just men and ants. The ants build their cities, live their lives, have wars and revolutions. Then the men want them out of the way, and so they go out of the way. That’s what we are now—just ants. Only——” “Yes,” I said. “We’re eatable ants.” We sat and looked at each other. “And what will they do with us?” I said. “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. After Weybridge I went south—thinking. I saw what was happening. Most of the people were busy squealing and getting excited. But I’m not so fond of squealing. I’ve been close to death once or twice. I’m not a soldier just for show. At the best and at the worst, death—it’s just death. And it’s the man who keeps on thinking who comes through. I saw everyone going away south. I said to myself, ‘Food won’t last this way,’ and I turned right back. I went towards the Martians, the way a sparrow goes towards a man. All round”—he waved a hand towards the horizon—“they’re starving in heaps, running away, treading on each other. . . .” He saw my face and stopped awkwardly. “No doubt lots of people with money have gone away to France,” he said. He seemed unsure whether to say sorry. Then he met my eyes and went on. “There’s food all around here. Tinned things in the shops; wines, spirits, mineral waters. And the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was telling you what I was thinking. I said to myself, ‘Here are intelligent things, and it seems they want us for food. First, they’ll smash us up—ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All that will go. If we were the size of ants, we might get through. But we’re not. It’s all too big to stop. That’s the first sure thing.’ Eh?” I agreed. “It is; I’ve thought it out. Very well, then—next. At the moment they catch us whenever they want us. A Martian only has to go a few miles to get a crowd running. And one day I saw one out by Wandsworth. He was pulling houses to pieces and searching among the wreckage. But they won’t keep on doing that. Soon they’ll have finished with all our guns and ships. They’ll have smashed our railways and done all the things they’re doing over there. Then they’ll begin catching us in a regular way. They’ll pick the best of us and store us in cages and things. That’s what they’ll start doing soon. Lord! They haven’t even begun on us yet. Don’t you see that?” “Not begun!” I cried. “Not begun. Everything that’s happened so far is because we didn’t have the sense to keep quiet. We worried them with guns and that kind of foolishness. And we lost our heads, and rushed off in crowds to places that were no safer than where we were. They don’t want to bother with us yet. They’re making their things. They’re making all the things they couldn’t bring with them. They’re getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very likely that’s why the cylinders have stopped for a while. They’re afraid of hitting the ones who are already here. So we mustn’t rush about blindly, howling, or get dynamite in the hope of blowing them up. We’ve got to fit ourselves to the new state of things. That’s how I work it out. It isn’t quite what a man wants for his kind. But it’s about where the facts point. And that’s the rule I acted on. Cities, nations, civilisation, progress—it’s all over. That game’s finished. We’re beat.” “But if that is true, what is there to live for?” The artilleryman looked at me for a moment. “There won’t be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so. There won’t be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little meals in restaurants. If it’s amusement you want, I reckon the game is up. Maybe you’ve got fine drawing-room manners. Maybe you don’t like eating peas with a knife, or dropping your aitches. Then you’d better throw all that away. It ain’t no more use.” “You mean——” “I mean that men like me are going on living—to keep our kind alive. I tell you, I’m dead set on living. And unless I’m wrong, you’ll soon show what *you’re* made of too. We aren’t going to be exterminated. And I don’t mean to be caught, either, and tamed and fattened and bred like a great ox. Ugh! Think of those brown crawling things!” “You don’t mean to say——” “I do. I’m going on living, under their feet. I’ve got it planned; I’ve thought it out. We men are beat. We don’t know enough. We’ve got to learn before we have a chance. And we’ve got to stay alive and free while we learn. See! That’s what has to be done.” I stared at him, astonished. The man’s courage moved me deeply. “Great God!” I cried. “But you are a man indeed!” And suddenly I gripped his hand. “Eh!” he said, with shining eyes. “I’ve thought it out, eh?” “Go on,” I said. “Well, those who mean to escape being caught must get ready. I’m getting ready. Mind you, not all of us are made to be wild beasts. And that’s what it’s got to be. That’s why I watched you. I had my doubts. You’re thin. I didn’t know it was you, you see, or how you’d been buried. All these people would be no good—the sort who lived in these houses. And all those damn little clerks who used to live down *that* way—they’d be no good. They haven’t got any spirit in them. They have no proud dreams and no proud desires. And a man who has neither—Lord! What is he but fear and being careful? They just used to rush off to work. I’ve seen hundreds of them, with a bit of breakfast in their hand. They ran wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train. They were afraid they’d lose their jobs if they didn’t. They worked at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand. They rushed back home for fear they’d be late for dinner. After dinner they stayed indoors, because they were afraid of the back streets. And they married their wives, but not because they wanted them. They married them because the wives had a bit of money. That money made them safer on their one little miserable rush through the world. Their lives were insured, and they had a bit of money invested, for fear of accidents. And on Sundays—fear of what comes after death. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will be a gift from heaven to these people. Nice big cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so of running about the fields on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be caught cheerfully. They’ll be quite glad after a while. They’ll wonder what people did before there were Martians to look after them. And the men who hang about in bars, and the fashionable young flirts, and the singers—I can imagine them. I can imagine them,” he said, with a kind of dark pleasure. “There’ll be lots of soft feelings and religion let loose among them. There’s hundreds of things I saw with my own eyes. I’ve only begun to see them clearly these last few days. Lots of them will take things as they are—fat and stupid. And lots of them will be worried by a sort of feeling that it’s all wrong. They’ll feel that they ought to be doing something. Now, sometimes lots of people feel they ought to be doing something. Then the weak always turn to a certain kind of religion. So do the people who go weak from too much complicated thinking. It’s a do-nothing religion, very holy and superior. They accept being treated badly, and they call it the will of the Lord. Very likely you’ve seen the same thing. It’s all their energy, blown about in a storm of fear and turned completely inside out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and holiness. And the ones who aren’t so simple will mix in a bit of—what is it?—eroticism.” He paused. “Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them. They’ll train them to do tricks—who knows? They’ll get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they’ll train to hunt us.” “No,” I cried, “that’s impossible! No human being——” “What’s the good of going on with such lies?” said the artilleryman. “There’s men who’d do it cheerfully. What nonsense to pretend there aren’t!” And his certainty won me over. “If they come after me,” he said. “Lord, if they come after me!” And he sank into dark, silent thought. I sat and thought about these things. I could find no argument against this man’s reasoning. Before the invasion, no one would have doubted that my mind was better than his. I was a known and respected writer on philosophy, and he was a common soldier. And yet he had already worked out a situation that I had hardly understood. “What are you doing?” I said after a while. “What plans have you made?” He hesitated. “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “What have we got to do? We have to invent a sort of life where men can live and have children. And they must be safe enough to bring the children up. Yes—wait a bit, and I’ll make it clearer what I think we ought to do. The tame ones will go the way of all tame animals. In a few generations they’ll be big, beautiful, full of rich blood, and stupid—rubbish! The danger is that those of us who stay wild will turn savage. We’ll sink into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, I mean to live underground. I’ve been thinking about the drains. Of course, people who don’t know drains think horrible things about them. But under this London there are miles and miles of them—hundreds of miles. A few days of rain, with London empty, will leave them fresh and clean. The main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then there are cellars, vaults and stores. From these we can dig passages to the drains, so we can escape. And there are the railway tunnels and the underground passages. Eh? You begin to see? And we form a band—strong, healthy men with clean minds. We’re not going to take in any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again.” “As you meant me to go?” “Well—I talked with you first, didn’t I?” “We won’t quarrel about that. Go on.” “Those who stay obey orders. We want strong, healthy women with clean minds too—mothers and teachers. No lazy, dreamy ladies—no damned rolling eyes. We can’t have anyone weak or silly. Life is real again. The useless, the burdens and the troublemakers have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. After all, it’s a sort of disloyalty to live and spoil the race. And they can’t be happy. Besides, dying isn’t so dreadful. It’s the fear that makes it bad. And we shall gather in all those places. Our district will be London. And we may even be able to keep watch, and run about in the open when the Martians are away. Play cricket, perhaps. That’s how we shall save the race. Eh? It’s possible, isn’t it? But saving the race isn’t enough by itself. As I say, that’s only being rats. The important thing is to save our knowledge and add to it. That’s where men like you come in. There’s books, there’s models. We must make great safe places deep down, and get all the books we can. Not novels and poetry rubbish, but ideas—science books. That’s where men like you come in. We must go to the British Museum and pick through all those books. Above all, we must keep up our science—learn more. We must watch these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it’s all working, perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we must leave the Martians alone. We mustn’t even steal. If we get in their way, we get out of it. We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know. But they’re intelligent things. They won’t hunt us down if they have everything they want. Not if they think we’re just harmless pests.” The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand on my arm. “After all, it may not be so much we have to learn before—Just imagine this. Four or five of their fighting-machines suddenly start off—Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in them. Not a Martian in them, but men—men who have learned how. It may even be in my lifetime—those men. Imagine having one of those lovely things, with its Heat-Ray wide and free! Imagine having it under your control! What would it matter if you were smashed to bits at the end, after a wild time like that? I reckon the Martians will open their beautiful eyes! Can’t you see them, man? Can’t you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing and blowing and hooting to their other machines? Something’s broken in every one. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling with it, *swish* comes the Heat-Ray, and look! Man has won back what is his.” For a while the artilleryman’s bold imagination took complete control of my mind. So did his confident, brave way of speaking. I believed without question in his picture of man’s future. I also believed that his astonishing plan could really work. Perhaps the reader thinks I was easily led and foolish. But he must compare his position with mine. He is reading calmly, with all his thoughts on his subject. I was crouching in fear in the bushes, listening, and my mind was full of worry. We talked like this through the early morning. Later we crept out of the bushes. We searched the sky for Martians. Then we hurried to the house on Putney Hill where he had his hiding place. It was the coal cellar of the house. He had spent a week on his work there. It was a tunnel hardly ten yards long. He planned that it would reach the main drain on Putney Hill. When I saw it, I had my first hint of the great gap between his dreams and his powers. I could have dug a hole like that in a day. But I believed in him enough to dig with him all that morning, until past midday. We had a garden wheelbarrow, and we tipped the earth we dug out against the kitchen stove. We refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and some wine from the pantry next door. In this steady work I found a strange relief from the painful strangeness of the world. As we worked, I turned his plan over in my mind. Soon objections and doubts began to come. But I worked there all morning, because I was so glad to have a purpose again. After an hour I began to wonder how far we had to dig to reach the main sewer. I also wondered about our chances of missing it altogether. My main problem was this. Why should we dig this long tunnel? We could get into the drain at once, down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. Also, it seemed to me that he had chosen the house badly. It needed a tunnel that was longer than necessary. And just as I was beginning to face these things, the artilleryman stopped digging and looked at me. “We’re working well,” he said. He put down his spade. “Let’s stop for a bit,” he said. “I think it’s time we had a look around from the roof of the house.” I wanted to go on. After a little hesitation, he picked up his spade again. Then suddenly a thought struck me. I stopped, and he stopped at once too. “Why were you walking about on the common,” I said, “instead of being here?” “Taking the air,” he said. “I was coming back. It’s safer at night.” “But the work?” “Oh, one can’t always work,” he said. In a flash I saw the man clearly, as he really was. He hesitated, holding his spade. “We ought to have a look around now,” he said. “If any come near, they may hear the spades. Then they’ll come down on us before we know it.” I no longer wanted to argue. We went up together to the roof. We stood on a ladder and peeped out of the roof door. No Martians could be seen. So we went out on the tiles. We slid down behind the parapet, where we were hidden. From here, some bushes hid most of Putney. But we could see the river below, a bubbling mass of red weed. The low parts of Lambeth were flooded and red. The red creeper climbed thickly up the trees around the old palace. Their branches stuck out from among it, thin and dead, with dried-up leaves. It was strange how completely both these red plants needed flowing water to spread. Near us neither of them had taken hold. Laburnums, pink may trees, snowball bushes and arbor-vitae trees rose out of laurels and hydrangeas. They were green and bright in the sunlight. Beyond Kensington thick smoke was rising. That smoke and a blue haze hid the hills to the north. The artilleryman began to tell me about the kind of people who were still in London. “One night last week,” he said, “some fools got the electric light working again. All Regent Street and the Circus were blazing with light. The place was crowded with ragged drunkards, men and women, with painted faces. They danced and shouted till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came, they noticed a fighting-machine. It was standing near the Langham, looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must have given some of them a nasty shock. He came down the road towards them. He picked up nearly a hundred who were too drunk or too frightened to run away.” What a strange, ugly flash of light from a time that no history will ever fully describe! After that, I asked him questions, and he came back to his grand plans again. He grew excited. He talked so well about capturing a fighting-machine that I more than half believed in him again. But now I was beginning to understand what kind of man he was. I could see why he said so much about not doing anything in a hurry. And I noticed that now there was no more talk of him capturing and fighting the great machine himself. After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed to want to start digging again. When he suggested a meal, I was very willing. He suddenly became very generous. After we had eaten, he went away and came back with some excellent cigars. We lit them, and his hopes glowed brightly. He seemed to see my arrival as a great occasion. “There’s some champagne in the cellar,” he said. “We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,” I said. “No,” he said. “I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We’ve got a heavy enough job in front of us! Let’s take a rest and gather our strength while we can. Look at these blistered hands!” He followed this idea of a holiday. After we had eaten, he insisted on playing cards. He taught me euchre. We divided London between us. I took the northern side and he took the southern. Then we played for parish points. This will seem strange and foolish to the sensible reader. But it is completely true. And even more surprising, I found this card game, and several others we played, extremely interesting. How strange the mind of man is! Our kind was on the edge of being wiped out, or of falling into a terrible, low state. We could see nothing ahead of us but the chance of a horrible death. And yet we could sit and follow the luck of these painted pieces of card. We could play the “joker” with real delight. Afterwards he taught me poker. I beat him at three hard games of chess. When it grew dark, we decided to take the risk, and we lit a lamp. After an endless string of games, we had supper, and the artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. He was no longer the energetic man of the morning, who was going to give new life to his kind. He was still hopeful, but his hope was quieter and more thoughtful. I remember that he ended by drinking to my health. He made a speech that kept repeating itself and kept stopping. I took a cigar and went upstairs. I wanted to look at the lights he had talked about, which blazed so green along the Highgate hills. At first I stared across the London valley without understanding anything. The northern hills were covered in darkness. The fires near Kensington glowed red. Now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was black. Then, nearer, I noticed a strange light. It was a pale, violet-purple glow, shining softly and trembling in the night breeze. For a while I could not understand it. Then I knew that this faint light must come from the red weed. When I realised this, my sense of wonder woke up again. So did my sense of how big or small things really are. I looked from the glow to Mars, red and clear, shining high in the west. Then I gazed long and seriously at the darkness over Hampstead and Highgate. I stayed on the roof for a very long time. I wondered at the strange changes of the day. I remembered all my states of mind, from the midnight prayer to the foolish card games. Then a violent disgust rose up in me. I remember that I threw away the cigar. It was a wasteful act, but it meant something to me. My foolishness came back to me, and it seemed much worse than it really was. I felt that I was a traitor to my wife and to my kind. I was filled with regret. I decided to leave this strange, wild dreamer of great things to his drinking and greed. I would go on into London. There, I thought, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my fellow men were doing. I was still on the roof when the late moon rose. ### Glossary - **cutlass**: a short, heavy sword with a curved blade - **rook**: a large black bird, like a crow - **We’re beat**: (rough speech) we are beaten; we have lost - **eatable**: able to be eaten as food - **dropping your aitches**: not saying the sound “h” at the start of words; people once thought this was lower-class speech - **season-ticket train**: the daily train that office workers took to work, with a ticket for many weeks - **eroticism**: interest in sex and sexual feelings - **manholes**: round holes in the street with a cover, which lead down into the drains - **mock-turtle soup**: a thick soup made to taste like turtle soup, usually from beef - **parapet**: a low wall along the edge of a roof - **euchre**: an old card game for two or more players - **parish points**: points in a card game, won by naming the parishes (small districts) of London ## VIII. Dead London After I left the artilleryman, I went down the hill. I went along the High Street and across the bridge to Fulham. At that time the red weed grew wildly, and it nearly choked the road over the bridge. But its leaves were already white in patches. This was the disease that was spreading, and soon it removed the weed very quickly. At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station, I found a man lying on the ground. The black dust had made him as black as a chimney sweep. He was alive, but so drunk that he could not help himself or speak. I could get nothing from him but curses and wild blows at my head. I think I would have stayed with him, if his face had not looked so brutal. From the bridge onwards there was black dust along the road, and it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I found food in a baker’s shop here. It was sour, hard and starting to go bad, but I could eat it. Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of powder. I passed a white row of houses on fire. The noise of the burning was a real relief to me. Going on towards Brompton, I found the streets quiet again. Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets, and upon dead bodies. Along the Fulham Road I saw about a dozen altogether. They had been dead for many days, so I hurried quickly past them. The black powder covered them and softened their shapes. Dogs had disturbed one or two of them. Where there was no black powder, it was strangely like a Sunday in the City. The shops were closed, the houses were locked, and the blinds were drawn. Everything was deserted and still. In some places thieves had been at work. But they had nearly always gone to the food and wine shops. In one place a jeweller’s window had been broken open. But it seemed that someone had disturbed the thief. A number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not bother to touch them. Further on, a woman in torn clothes lay in a heap on a doorstep. Her hand hung over her knee. It was cut deeply, and blood had run down her rusty brown dress. A large bottle of champagne lay smashed, and the wine made a pool across the pavement. She seemed to be asleep, but she was dead. The further I went into London, the deeper the stillness grew. But it was not really the stillness of death. It was the stillness of waiting, of expecting something. The destruction had already burned the north-western edges of the city. It had wiped out Ealing and Kilburn. At any moment it might strike among these houses and leave them as smoking ruins. It was a city that had been condemned and left empty. . . . In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead bodies and black powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept upon my senses so slowly that I hardly noticed it. It was a sobbing sound that went between two notes, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla.” It kept on and on without stopping. When I passed streets that ran north, it grew louder. Then houses and buildings seemed to soften it and cut it off again. It came pouring down Exhibition Road like a full tide. I stopped and stared towards Kensington Gardens. I wondered at this strange, distant crying. It was as if that great desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and loneliness. “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried that voice, which was more than human. Great waves of sound swept down the broad, sunlit road, between the tall buildings on each side. Full of wonder, I turned north towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. I half thought of breaking into the Natural History Museum. I could find my way up to the tops of the towers and see across the park. But I decided to stay on the ground, where I could hide quickly. So I went on up Exhibition Road. All the large houses on each side of the road were empty and still. My footsteps echoed against the walls. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight. A bus lay overturned, and there was the skeleton of a horse, picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time. Then I went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger. But above the rooftops on the north side of the park I could see nothing. There was only some thin smoke to the north-west. “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried the voice. It seemed to me to come from the area around Regent’s Park. The sad, lonely cry worked on my mind. The mood that had kept me going passed away. The sound took hold of me. I found that I was terribly tired and that my feet were sore. And now I was hungry and thirsty again. It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I alone, when all London lay dead in its black shroud? I felt so lonely that I could hardly bear it. My mind went to old friends that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in the chemists’ shops, and of the strong drinks that the wine merchants kept. I remembered the two drunken, hopeless creatures who, as far as I knew, shared the city with me. . . . I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch. Here again there was black powder and several bodies. An evil, threatening smell came up through the iron bars over the cellars of some of the houses. After the heat of my long walk, I grew very thirsty. With enormous trouble I managed to break into a pub and get food and drink. I was tired after eating. I went into the little sitting room behind the bar and slept on a black horsehair sofa there. I woke up with that miserable howling still in my ears, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla.” It was now dusk. I found some biscuits and a cheese in the bar. There was a meat safe, but it held nothing but maggots. Then I wandered on through the silent squares where people lived, to Baker Street. Portman Square is the only one I can name. And so at last I came out at Regent’s Park. As I came out of the top of Baker Street, I saw something far away over the trees. In the clear light of the sunset was the hood of the Martian giant. The howling came from him. I was not terrified. I came upon him as if it were a normal thing. I watched him for some time, but he did not move. He seemed to be standing and yelling, for no reason that I could find. I tried to make a plan. That endless sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to be very afraid. Certainly I was more curious than afraid. I wanted to know the reason for this crying, always on the same notes. I turned back away from the park and went into Park Road. I meant to go round the edge of the park. I went along under the shelter of the terraces. From the direction of St. John’s Wood I got a view of this howling Martian who stood so still. A couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street, I heard a crowd of dogs barking. First I saw a dog running straight towards me, with a piece of rotten red meat in his jaws. Then I saw a pack of starving mongrels chasing him. He made a wide curve to avoid me. Perhaps he feared I might be one more rival for the meat. The barking died away down the silent road. Then the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” rose up again. Halfway to St. John’s Wood station, I came upon the wrecked handling-machine. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. I climbed among the ruins. Only then did I see, with a shock, this mechanical Samson. It lay among the ruins it had made, its tentacles bent, smashed and twisted. The front part was shattered. It seemed to have driven blindly straight into the house. When the house fell, it had been crushed. It seemed to me then that this handling-machine might have escaped from the control of its Martian. I could not climb among the ruins to see it. And the twilight was now so far gone that I could not see two things. There was blood smeared on its seat. And there was the chewed gristle of the Martian, which the dogs had left. Wondering even more at everything I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second Martian. He was as still as the first. He stood silent in the park, towards the Zoological Gardens. A little beyond the ruins around the smashed handling-machine, I came upon the red weed again. The Regent’s Canal was a soft, wet mass of dark red plants. As I crossed the bridge, the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” stopped. It was cut off, suddenly. The silence came like a thunderclap. The dark houses around me stood faint, tall and dim. The trees towards the park were growing black. All around me the red weed climbed among the ruins. It twisted as if it wanted to rise above me in the dark. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. While that voice was sounding, I could bear the loneliness and emptiness. Because of it, London had still seemed alive. That sense of life around me had kept me going. Then suddenly there was a change. Something had passed away—I did not know what. And then there was a stillness that I could almost feel. There was nothing but this bare, empty quiet. London stared at me like a ghost. The windows in the white houses were like the empty eyes of skulls. My imagination saw a thousand silent enemies moving around me. Terror took hold of me. My own boldness filled me with horror. In front of me the road became pitch black, as if it had been covered with tar. I saw a twisted shape lying across the path. I could not make myself go on. I turned down St. John’s Wood Road. I ran wildly towards Kilburn, away from this stillness that I could not bear. Until long after midnight I hid from the night and the silence in a cabmen’s shelter in Harrow Road. But before dawn my courage came back. While the stars were still in the sky, I turned once more towards Regent’s Park. I lost my way among the streets. Then, in the half-light of early dawn, I saw a long avenue. At the end of it was the curve of Primrose Hill. On the top, rising up to the fading stars, stood a third Martian. He was upright and still, like the others. A mad decision took hold of me. I would die and end it all. And I would save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on carelessly towards this giant. Then, as I came nearer and the light grew, I saw a great number of black birds. They were flying round and round the hood and crowding about it. At that my heart jumped, and I began to run along the road. I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund’s Terrace. I waded across a rushing stream of water, up to my chest. It was pouring down from the waterworks towards the Albert Road. I came out on the grass before the sun rose. Great mounds of earth had been piled around the top of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it. It was the last and largest place the Martians had made. From behind these heaps a thin smoke rose against the sky. Against the skyline an eager dog ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew real. I began to believe it. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling joy, as I ran up the hill towards the still monster. Long, thin strips of something brown hung out of the hood. The hungry birds pecked and tore at them. In another moment I had scrambled up the wall of earth and stood on its top. Below me lay the inside of the redoubt. It was a huge space, with gigantic machines here and there. There were great mounds of material and strange shelters. And scattered about it were the Martians. Some lay in their overturned war-machines. Some lay in the handling-machines, which were now stiff. And a dozen of them lay in a row, stiff and silent. The Martians were—*dead!* They had been killed by the bacteria of rot and disease, which their bodies were not ready for. They had been killed as the red weed was being killed. All man’s weapons and plans had failed. And then they had been killed by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. For that is how it had happened. Indeed, I and many others might have foreseen it, if terror and disaster had not blinded our minds. These germs of disease have killed human beings since the beginning of things. They killed our ancestors before there were humans, ever since life began here. But through natural selection our kind has developed the power to resist them. We never give in to any germs without a struggle. And against many germs our living bodies are completely safe. For example, there are the germs that make dead things rot. But there are no bacteria on Mars. As soon as these invaders arrived, as soon as they drank and fed, our tiny allies began to destroy them. Already, when I watched them, they were doomed, and nothing could save them. They were dying and rotting even as they moved about. It had to happen. Man has paid for his right to the earth with a billion deaths. Now it is his, against anyone who comes. It would still be his if the Martians were ten times as mighty as they are. For men do not live or die for nothing. Here and there they lay scattered, nearly fifty of them altogether, in that great hole they had made. A death had come upon them that they must have found impossible to understand. At that time I could not understand this death either. All I knew was that these things were dead. They had been alive, and so terrible to men. For a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib’s army had happened again. I thought that God had changed his mind, and that the Angel of Death had killed them in the night. I stood staring into the pit. My heart grew wonderfully light, as the rising sun set the world on fire around me with its rays. The pit was still in darkness. The mighty engines rose out of the shadows towards the light, weird and dim and strange. They were so great and wonderful in their power and their complex design. Their twisted shapes were so unearthly. Far below me, I could hear a great number of dogs. They were fighting over the bodies that lay dark in the bottom of the pit. Across the pit, on its far edge, lay the great flying-machine, flat and huge and strange. They had been testing it in our thicker air when decay and death stopped them. Death had not come a day too soon. I heard the harsh cry of a bird above me. I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would never fight again. Torn red strips of flesh were dripping from it onto the overturned seats on the top of Primrose Hill. I turned and looked down the slope of the hill. There stood the other two Martians that I had seen in the night. Birds were flying round them like rings of light. They stood just as death had found them. One had died while it was still crying out to its companions. Perhaps it was the last to die. Its voice had gone on and on until the power of its machinery ran out. Now they shone in the brightness of the rising sun, harmless towers of shining metal on three legs. All around the pit stretched the great Mother of Cities. It had been saved, as if by a miracle, from destruction for ever. Some people have only seen London covered in her dark robes of smoke. They can hardly imagine the bare clearness and beauty of this silent wilderness of houses. To the east were the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the broken spire of the church. Over them the sun blazed in a clear sky. Here and there in the great wilderness of roofs, some surface caught the light. It shone with a fierce white brightness. To the north lay Kilburn and Hampstead, blue and crowded with houses. To the west the great city was dim. And to the south, beyond the Martians, many things stood out, clear and small in the sunrise. There were the green waves of Regent’s Park and the Langham Hotel. There were the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute and the giant houses of the Brompton Road. Beyond them the broken ruins of Westminster rose up, dim in the distance. Far away and blue were the Surrey hills. The towers of the Crystal Palace shone like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the sunrise. I saw for the first time that it was damaged. There was a huge, wide hole on its western side. I looked at this wide spread of houses, factories and churches, silent and empty. I thought of all the hopes and efforts, and the countless lives, that had built this human reef. I thought of the quick, merciless destruction that had hung over it all. Then I realised that the shadow had been pushed back. Men might still live in the streets. This dear, huge, dead city of mine might be alive and powerful once more. And I felt a wave of feeling that was very close to tears. The torment was over. The healing would begin that very day. The survivors were scattered over the country, without leaders, laws or food, like sheep without a shepherd. They would begin to come back, with the thousands who had escaped by sea. The pulse of life would grow stronger and stronger. It would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the empty squares. Whatever damage had been done, the hand of the destroyer had been stopped. All the bare wrecks stared so sadly at the sunlit grass of the hill. They were the blackened skeletons of houses. Soon they would echo with the hammers of the builders. They would ring with the tapping of their trowels. At this thought I stretched out my hands towards the sky and began to thank God. In a year, I thought—in a year. . . . Then, with overwhelming force, came the thought of myself and my wife. I thought of our old life of hope and gentle care for each other, which had ended for ever. ### Glossary - **chimney sweep**: a man whose job is to clean the black soot out of chimneys - **shroud**: a cloth that is put around a dead body before it is buried - **meat safe**: a small cupboard with holes or wire for air, used to keep meat - **maggots**: small white young of flies, which live in rotting meat - **mongrels**: dogs of mixed breed - **Samson**: a very strong man in the Bible - **gristle**: the tough, hard part of meat - **thunderclap**: the sudden loud crash of thunder - **cabmen’s shelter**: a small hut in the street where cab drivers could rest and eat - **redoubt**: a place with high earth walls built for defence - **Sennacherib**: a king in the Bible whose great army was killed in one night by the Angel of the Lord - **Angel of Death**: in old stories, the angel sent by God to take people’s lives - **Mother of Cities**: a proud name for London, the greatest city - **reef**: a long line of rock or coral in the sea, slowly built up over a very long time - **trowels**: small flat tools that builders use to spread cement between bricks ## IX. Wreckage And now comes the strangest thing in my story. And yet perhaps it is not so very strange. I remember everything I did that day, clearly, coldly and vividly. I remember it all until the moment I stood weeping and praising God on the top of Primrose Hill. And then I forget. Of the next three days I know nothing. Since then I have learned that I was not the first to discover that the Martians were defeated. Several wanderers like me had already discovered it the night before. One man—the first—had gone to St. Martin’s-le-Grand. While I was hiding in the cabmen’s hut, he had managed to send a telegram to Paris. From there the joyful news had flashed all over the world. A thousand cities had been frozen with terrible fears. Suddenly they blazed with wild lights of celebration. They knew about it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham while I was standing at the edge of the pit. Already, I have heard, men were weeping with joy. They stopped their work to shake hands and shout. They were making up trains to go down to London, even from places as near as Crewe. The church bells had stopped ringing a fortnight before. Now suddenly they caught the news, until all England was ringing with bells. Men on bicycles, thin-faced and untidy, raced along every country lane. They shouted about this rescue that no one had dared to hope for. They shouted it to thin, staring figures of despair. And the food! Corn, bread and meat were rushing to help us, across the Channel, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. All the ships in the world seemed to be going towards London in those days. But I have no memory of any of this. I drifted about, a man out of his mind. I found myself in the house of some kind people. They had found me on the third day, wandering through the streets of St. John’s Wood. I was weeping and raving. They have told me since that I was singing some mad little song: “The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!” These people had their own troubles. I would very much like to thank them, but I may not even give their name here. Even so, they took the trouble to look after me. They sheltered me and protected me from myself. It seems that they learned some of my story from me during the days when my mind was lost. When my mind was steady again, they very gently told me what they had learned about Leatherhead. Two days after I was trapped in the ruined house, a Martian destroyed it. Every living soul in it died. It seemed that he had wiped it out for no reason at all. He did it as a boy might crush an ant hill, simply because he had the power. I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man and a sad one, and they were patient with me. I stayed with them for four days after I got better. All that time I felt a vague desire, and it kept growing. I wanted to look once more at whatever was left of my little life. That life seemed so happy and bright in my past. It was just a hopeless wish to feed on my own misery. They tried to talk me out of it. They did everything they could to turn me away from these dark thoughts. But at last I could not fight the urge any longer. I promised faithfully to come back to them. I will admit that I parted from these four-day friends with tears. Then I went out again into the streets that had so lately been dark and strange and empty. Already the streets were busy with people coming back. In places there were even shops open. And I saw a drinking fountain with water running. I remember how bright the day seemed, as if it were mocking me. I was going back on my sad journey to the little house at Woking. I remember how busy the streets were, and how lively the people moving around me. So many people were out everywhere, busy with a thousand activities. It seemed impossible that a large part of the population had been killed. But then I noticed how yellow the skin was on the people I met. The men’s hair was long and wild, and their eyes were large and bright. Every second man still wore his dirty rags. All their faces seemed to have one of two expressions. Either they showed a leaping joy and energy, or they showed a grim determination. Except for the look on their faces, London seemed like a city of tramps. The vestries were giving out bread to everyone. The French government had sent it to us. The few horses were so thin that their ribs showed sadly. Tired, thin special constables with white badges stood at the corner of every street. I saw little of the damage the Martians had done until I reached Wellington Street. There I saw the red weed climbing over the supports of Waterloo Bridge. At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the usual strange contrasts of that odd time. A sheet of paper was waving proudly against a thicket of red weed. A stick had been pushed through it to hold it in place. It was the poster of the first newspaper to start printing again—the *Daily Mail*. I bought a copy with a blackened shilling that I found in my pocket. Most of the paper was blank. The single printer who made it had amused himself on the back page. He had made a strange, funny design out of printing blocks for advertisements. What he printed was full of emotion. The news services had not yet found their way back. I learned nothing new, except one thing. In just one week, the study of the Martian machines had already given astonishing results. Among other things, the article told me that the “Secret of Flying” had been discovered. I did not believe it at the time. At Waterloo I found the free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over. There were few people on the train, and I did not want to make casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself. I sat with folded arms and looked gloomily at the sunlit ruins that flowed past the windows. Just outside the station, the train jolted over temporary rails. On both sides of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. As far as Clapham Junction the face of London was dirty with the powder of the Black Smoke. This was in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain. At Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again. Hundreds of clerks and shop workers without jobs were working there, side by side with the usual navvies. We were jolted over rails that had been laid again in a hurry. All down the line from there, the country looked bare and unfamiliar. Wimbledon especially had suffered. Walton had not lost its pine woods to fire. Because of this, it seemed the least damaged place along the line. The Wandle, the Mole and every little stream were heaped full of red weed. It looked like something between butcher’s meat and pickled cabbage. But the Surrey pine woods were too dry for the long, hanging stems of the red climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, there were some nursery gardens. In them were the heaped masses of earth around the sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing around it. Some sappers were busy working in the middle of it. Above it a Union Jack was flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery gardens were crimson everywhere with the weed. It was a wide stretch of angry colour, cut by purple shadows, and very painful to look at. With huge relief, my eyes moved away from the burned greys and dark reds nearby. They rested on the soft blue-green of the hills to the east. The line on the London side of Woking station was still being repaired. So I got off at Byfleet station and took the road to Maybury. I went past the place where the artilleryman and I had talked to the hussars. Then I went on past the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the thunderstorm. Here, out of curiosity, I turned aside. Among a tangle of red leaves, I found the bent and broken dog cart. The whitened bones of the horse lay scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood looking at these remains. . . . Then I came back through the pine wood. Here and there the red weed came up to my neck. I found that the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already been buried. And so I came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed. I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope, which faded at once. The door had been forced open. It was not fastened, and it was opening slowly as I came near. It slammed shut again. The curtains of my study were fluttering out of the open window. It was the window where the artilleryman and I had watched the dawn. No one had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left them nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house felt empty. The stair carpet was creased and stained where I had crouched on the night of the disaster. I had been soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm. I saw that our muddy footprints still went up the stairs. I followed them to my study. There on my writing-table, with the selenite paperweight on top, still lay the sheet of work I had left. I had left it on the afternoon when the cylinder opened. For a while I stood reading over my unfinished arguments. It was a paper about how Moral Ideas would probably develop as civilisation developed. The last sentence was the start of a prophecy. “In about two hundred years,” I had written, “we may expect——” The sentence stopped suddenly. I remembered that I could not keep my mind on my work that morning, hardly a month ago. I had stopped writing to get my *Daily Chronicle* from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden gate as he came along. I remembered how I had listened to his strange story of “Men from Mars.” I came downstairs and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and the bread, both badly rotten now, and a beer bottle lying on its side. They were just as the artilleryman and I had left them. My home was empty and sad. I saw how foolish my faint hope had been, though I had held on to it for so long. And then a strange thing happened. “It is no use,” said a voice. “The house is deserted. No one has been here these ten days. Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but you.” I was startled. Had I spoken my thought out loud? I turned round. The French window behind me was open. I took a step to it and stood looking out. And there were my cousin and my wife. They were amazed and afraid, just as I was amazed and afraid. My wife was white, and there were no tears in her eyes. She gave a faint cry. “I came,” she said. “I knew—knew——” She put her hand to her throat and swayed. I took a step forward and caught her in my arms. ### Glossary - **St. Martin’s-le-Grand**: the street in London where the main post office and telegraph office stood - **fortnight**: two weeks - **raving**: talking or shouting wildly, like someone who is mad - **vestries**: local councils of a parish (a small district) in London - **special constables**: ordinary people who help the police in a time of trouble - **shilling**: an old British coin; twenty shillings made a pound - **compartment**: a small separate room inside a railway carriage - **navvies**: workers who build roads and railways - **nursery gardens**: places where young plants and trees are grown for sale - **Union Jack**: the flag of the United Kingdom - **selenite paperweight**: a heavy piece of clear crystal that stops papers from blowing away - **French window**: a glass door, often one of a pair, that opens onto a garden ## X. The Epilogue Now that I am ending my story, I am sorry about one thing. I can add very little to the discussion of the many questions that are still unsettled. In one way I shall certainly be criticised. My own field is speculative philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology comes from only a book or two. But Carver has suggested why the Martians died so quickly. His idea seems so likely that we can almost see it as proven. I have accepted it in the main part of my story. In any case, scientists examined the bodies of the Martians after the war. In all of them they found no bacteria except kinds that were already known on Earth. The Martians did not bury any of their dead. And they killed people without any care. Both these facts also suggest that they knew nothing at all about how things rot. But although this seems likely, it is not at all proven. Nor do we know what the Black Smoke was made of, which the Martians used with such deadly effect. And the machine that made the Heat-Rays is still a puzzle. There were terrible disasters at the laboratories in Ealing and South Kensington. Since then, scientists have not wanted to study the Heat-Ray any further. Spectrum analysis of the black powder clearly shows that it holds an unknown element. This element shows a bright group of three lines in the green. It is possible that it joins with argon to form a compound. Perhaps this compound acts at once, with deadly effect, on some part of the blood. But such unproven guesses will hardly interest the general reader, for whom I wrote this story. After the destruction of Shepperton, a brown scum drifted down the Thames. None of it was examined at the time, and now none can be found. I have already given the results of the study of the Martians’ bodies. I went as far as the prowling dogs allowed such a study. But everyone knows the magnificent, almost complete Martian kept in spirits at the Natural History Museum. Everyone knows the countless drawings that have been made of it. Beyond that, their bodies and how they worked are of interest only to scientists. There is a more serious question that matters to everyone. Will the Martians attack again? I do not think that people are paying nearly enough attention to this. At present the planet Mars is in conjunction. But every time it returns to opposition, I, for one, expect them to try again. In any case, we should be ready. I think it should be possible to find the position of the gun that fires the shots. Then we could keep a constant watch on this part of the planet. We could be ready for the next attack before it arrives. In that case the cylinder could be destroyed with dynamite or big guns. This could be done before it was cool enough for the Martians to come out. Or they could be killed with guns as soon as the screw opened. I think they have lost a huge advantage, because their first surprise attack failed. Perhaps they see it the same way. Lessing has given excellent reasons to believe that the Martians have really managed to land on the planet Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in a line with the sun. That is to say, Mars was in opposition for someone watching from Venus. After that, a strange, bright, winding mark appeared on the dark half of Venus. At almost the same time, a faint dark mark was found on a photograph of Mars. It had the same winding shape. You need to see the drawings of these marks to understand fully how alike they are. Whether we expect another invasion or not, these events must greatly change our views of man’s future. We have learned now that we cannot think of this planet as a safe home for Man. We cannot think of it as fenced in. We can never know in advance what unseen good or evil may suddenly come to us out of space. Perhaps, in the larger plan of the universe, this invasion from Mars will bring men some benefit in the end. It has taken away our calm confidence in the future. Such confidence, more than anything else, makes a people grow weak and lazy. The invasion has also given huge gifts to human science. And it has done much to spread the idea of the common good of all mankind. Perhaps, across the vastness of space, the Martians have watched what happened to their first settlers. Perhaps they have learned their lesson and found a safer home on the planet Venus. Whatever the truth may be, men will watch the face of Mars closely for many years yet. And those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring fear with them as they fall. All the sons of men will feel it. Men’s views have become much broader because of all this. It is hard to say how much. Before the cylinder fell, most people believed one thing. They thought that there was no life anywhere in the depths of space. Only the small surface of our tiny world had life. Now we see further. If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to think that men cannot do it too. The sun is slowly cooling, and one day this earth will become impossible to live on. It must happen in the end. Then perhaps the thread of life that began here will have streamed out. Perhaps it will have caught our sister planet in its net. I have imagined a dim and wonderful picture. In it, life spreads slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system. It spreads out through the vast, lifeless spaces among the stars. But that is a distant dream. On the other hand, the destruction of the Martians may only be a delay. Perhaps the future belongs to them, and not to us. I must confess something. The stress and danger of that time have left a lasting feeling of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study, writing by lamplight. Suddenly I see the healing valley below filled with twisting flames again. I feel that the house behind me and around me is empty and lonely. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass me. There is a butcher boy in a cart and a cab full of visitors. There is a workman on a bicycle, and there are children going to school. Suddenly they become vague and unreal. Once again I am hurrying with the artilleryman through the hot, heavy silence. At night I see the black powder darkening the silent streets. I see the twisted bodies covered in that layer of dust. They rise up at me, torn and bitten by dogs. They chatter and grow fiercer, paler and uglier. At last they become mad, twisted shapes of humans. And I wake, cold and miserable, in the darkness of the night. I go to London and see the busy crowds in Fleet Street and the Strand. Then a thought comes into my mind. They are only the ghosts of the past. They haunt the streets that I have seen silent and miserable. They go to and fro, like phantoms in a dead city. They are a false copy of life, like a dead body that electricity makes move. And it is strange, too, to stand on Primrose Hill. I did so only a day before writing this last chapter. From there I see the great spread of houses, dim and blue through the haze of smoke and mist. At last it vanishes into the vague, low sky. I see people walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill. I see the sightseers around the Martian machine that still stands there. I hear the noise of children playing. And I remember the time when I saw it all bright and sharp, hard and silent. That was at the dawn of that last great day. . . . And strangest of all is it to hold my wife’s hand again. For I have counted her among the dead, and she has counted me. ### Glossary - **speculative philosophy**: thinking and writing about big questions of life and ideas, not about facts from experiments - **comparative physiology**: the science that compares how the bodies of different animals work - **bacteria**: very small living things that can cause illness and decay - **spectrum analysis**: a way of finding out what something is made of by studying the colours of light it gives off - **argon**: a gas that is part of the air - **scum**: a dirty layer that floats on top of water - **in spirits**: kept in a jar of strong alcohol so that it does not rot - **conjunction**: the time when Mars is on the far side of the sun, very far from Earth - **opposition**: the time when Mars is closest to Earth - **seed bed**: a piece of ground where young plants first grow - **solar system**: the sun and all the planets that move around it - **phantoms**: ghosts; things that seem real but are not