The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells [1898]

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be

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

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

KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

BOOK ONE

THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

CHAPTER ONE

THE EVE OF THE WAR

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth

century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by

intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as

men busied themselves about their various concerns they were

scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a

microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and

multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to

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

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

infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to

the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of

them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or

improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of

those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be

other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to

welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds

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

intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with

envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And

early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the

sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it

receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.

It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our

world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its

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

seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling

to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water

and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

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

up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that

intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all,

beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since

Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the

superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that

it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has

already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is

still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial

region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest

winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have

shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow

seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and

periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of

exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a

present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate

pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their

powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with

instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of,

they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of

them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with

vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of

fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad

stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them

at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The

intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant

struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief

of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and

this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they

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

their only escape from the destruction that, generation after

generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what

ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only

upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its

inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness,

were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged

by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such

apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same

spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing

subtlety--their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of

ours--and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh

perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have

seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men

like Schiaparelli watched the red planet--it is odd, by-the-bye, that

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

interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so

well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the

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

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

of it first in the issue of _Nature_ dated August 2. I am inclined to

think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in

the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired

at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site

of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

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

opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange

palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of

incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of

the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted,

indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an

enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become

invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal

puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as

flaming gases rushed out of a gun."

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there

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

Telegraph_, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest

dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of

the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer,

at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess

of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a

scrutiny of the red planet.

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

vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed

lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the

steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in

the roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it.

Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the

telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet

swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and

small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly

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

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

was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that

kept the planet in view.

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

advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty

millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of

void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust

of the material universe swims.

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

three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the

unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness

looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far

profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small,

flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible

distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles,

came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so

much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of

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

missile.

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

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

projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and

at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I

was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way

in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while

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

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the

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

first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness,

with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I

had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute

gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy

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

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

and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars,

and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were

signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a

heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in

progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic

evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to

one," he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after

about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a

flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on

earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing

caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust,

visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey,

fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's

atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and

popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the

volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical _Punch_, I remember,

made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all

unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew

earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the

empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer.

It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift

fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they

did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph

of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days.

People in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and

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

much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series

of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as

civilisation progressed.

One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been

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

starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed

out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so

many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a

party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing

and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the

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

distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling,

softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to

me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging

in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.

CHAPTER TWO

THE FALLING STAR

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

in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high

in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an

ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish

streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest

authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first

appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him

that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.

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

French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I

loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it.

Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer

space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I

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

travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many

people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of

it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended.

No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

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

shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on

the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the

idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from

the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the

projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every

direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half

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

against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the

scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its

descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder,

caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured

incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached

the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most

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

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

approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the

unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred

to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made

for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at

its unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some

evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully

still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge,

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

there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the

faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on

the common.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey

clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling

off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and

raining down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell

with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.

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

the heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the

bulk to see the Thing more clearly. He fancied even then that the

cooling of the body might account for this, but what disturbed that

idea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the

cylinder.

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

cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement

that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had

been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the

circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated,

until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk

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

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

Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

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

roasted to death! Trying to escape!"

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

flash upon Mars.

The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he

forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. But

luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands

on the still-glowing metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment,

then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into

Woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock.

He met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he

told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the

pit--that the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the

potman who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell

Bridge. The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an

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

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

garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood.

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

"Well?" said Henderson.

"It's out on Horsell Common now."

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

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

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

Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.

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

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

taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and

came out into the road. The two men hurried back at once to the

common, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But

now the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal

showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either

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

They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and,

meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside

must be insensible or dead.

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

consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get

help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and

disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just

as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were

opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway

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

newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the

idea.

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

started for the common to see the "dead men from Mars." That was the

form the story took. I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about

a quarter to nine when I went out to get my _Daily Chronicle_. I was

naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the

Ottershaw bridge to the sand pits.

CHAPTER THREE

ON HORSELL COMMON

I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the

huge hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the

appearance of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. The turf

and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No

doubt its impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy

were not there. I think they perceived that nothing was to be done

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

There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with

their feet dangling, and amusing themselves--until I stopped them--by

throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about

it, they began playing at "touch" in and out of the group of

bystanders.

Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I

employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his

little boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were

accustomed to hang about the railway station. There was very little

talking. Few of the common people in England had anything but the

vaguest astronomical ideas in those days. Most of them were staring

quietly at the big table like end of the cylinder, which was still as

Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I fancy the popular expectation of

a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at this inanimate bulk.

Some went away while I was there, and other people came. I clambered

into the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet. The

top had certainly ceased to rotate.

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

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

really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown

across the road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas

float. It required a certain amount of scientific education to

perceive that the grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that

the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid

and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. "Extra-terrestrial" had no

meaning for most of the onlookers.

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

come from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it

contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be

automatic. In spite of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men

in Mars. My mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its

containing manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might

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

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

impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed

happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury.

But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract

investigations.

In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very

much. The early editions of the evening papers had startled London

with enormous headlines:

"A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS."

"REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,"

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

had roused every observatory in the three kingdoms.

There were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station

standing in the road by the sand pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham,

and a rather lordly carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of

bicycles. In addition, a large number of people must have walked, in

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

was altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily dressed

ladies among the others.

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

and the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees. The

burning heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards

Ottershaw was blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off

vertical streamers of smoke. An enterprising sweet-stuff dealer in

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

apples and ginger beer.

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

about half a dozen men--Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man

that I afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with

several workmen wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving

directions in a clear, high-pitched voice. He was standing on the

cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson

and streaming with perspiration, and something seemed to have

irritated him.

A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its

lower end was still embedded. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the

staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and

asked me if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of

the manor.

The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to

their excavations, especially the boys. They wanted a light railing

put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint

stirring was occasionally still audible within the case, but that the

workmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them.

The case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the

faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior.

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

privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure. I failed to

find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from

London by the six o'clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then

about a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to

the station to waylay him.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CYLINDER OPENS

When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups

were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons

were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out

black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people,

perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared

to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my

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

"Keep back! Keep back!"

A boy came running towards me.

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

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

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

three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two

ladies there being by no means the least active.

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

"Keep back!" said several.

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

seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the

pit.

"I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We don't know

what's in the confounded thing, you know!"

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

standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.

The crowd had pushed him in.

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

two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me,

and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I

turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of

the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck

my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the

Thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black.

I had the sunset in my eyes.

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

little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know

I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the

shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two

luminous disks--like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey

snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the

writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another.

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

behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,

from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my

way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to

horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate

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

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

myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running

off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and

ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.

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

rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and

caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The

mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had,

one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless

brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole

creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular

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

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the

strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with

its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a

chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this

mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the

lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness

of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above

all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at

once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was

something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy

deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this

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

dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the

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

mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith

another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the

aperture.

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

perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for

I could not avert my face from these things.

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

panting, and waited further developments. The common round the sand

pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated

terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at

the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a renewed

horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of

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

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

got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until

only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have

fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to

go back and help him that my fears overruled.

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the

heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming

along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the

sight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more

standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes,

behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in

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

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

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

vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the

ground.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAT-RAY

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the

cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind

of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in

the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground

of fear and curiosity.

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

longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,

seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand

heaps that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin

black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset

and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up,

joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a

wobbling motion. What could be going on there?

Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a

little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the

direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict.

There were few near me. One man I approached--he was, I perceived,

a neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name--and accosted.

But it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.

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

repeated this over and over again.

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

that. We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side,

deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. Then I

shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a

yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was

walking towards Woking.

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The

crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I

heard now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards

Chobham dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from

the pit.

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

suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore

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

movement upon the sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather

force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained

unbroken. Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance,

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

irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated

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

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand

pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a

lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards

of the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little

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

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and

since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,

intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by

approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.

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

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

I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this

attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance

dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost

complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed

it at discreet distances.

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

greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which

drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was

so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of

brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to

darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after

their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became

audible.

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag

at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small

vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose,

their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished.

Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud,

droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the

ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one

to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some

invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was

as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

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

and falling, and their supporters turning to run.

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

from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it

was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of

light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft

of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry

furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away

towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden

buildings suddenly set alight.

It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death,

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

towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded

and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits

and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then

it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn

through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a

curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled.

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

Woking station opens out on the common. Forth-with the hissing and

humming ceased, and the black, dome-like object sank slowly out of

sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood

motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that

death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in

my surprise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me

suddenly dark and unfamiliar.

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except

where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the

early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the

stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale,

bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the

roofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the western

afterglow. The Martians and their appliances were altogether

invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror

wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and

glowed still, and the houses towards Woking station were sending up

spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air.

Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The

little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out

of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me,

had scarcely been broken.

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

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

without, came--fear.

With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the

heather.

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

of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an

extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping

silently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to

look back.

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being

played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety,

this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap

after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD

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

men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are

able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute

non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam

against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic

mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a

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

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

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

visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its

touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass,

and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam.

That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the

pit, charred and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the

common from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.

The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and

Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the shops had closed when

the tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so

forth, attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the

Horsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at

last upon the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up

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

make any novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a

trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices

along the road in the gloaming. . . .

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

had opened, though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bicycle to

the post office with a special wire to an evening paper.

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

found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the

spinning mirror over the sand pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt,

soon infected by the excitement of the occasion.

By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may

have been a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place,

besides those who had left the road to approach the Martians nearer.

There were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their

best, under instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter

them from approaching the cylinder. There was some booing from those

more thoughtless and excitable souls to whom a crowd is always an

occasion for noise and horse-play.

Stent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision,

had telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians

emerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these

strange creatures from violence. After that they returned to lead that

ill-fated advance. The description of their death, as it was seen by

the crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three

puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the flashes of flame.

But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only

the fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of

the Heat-Ray saved them. Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror

been a few yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale. They

saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were,

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

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

swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees

that line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows,

firing the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a

portion of the gable of the house nearest the corner.

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

panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly for some

moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and

single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then

came a crying from the common. There were shrieks and shouts, and

suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with

his hands clasped over his head, screaming.

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

turning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to

Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep.

Where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd

jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not

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

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

darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HOW I REACHED HOME

For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress

of blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather. All

about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless

sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before

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

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

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

my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside.

That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. I

fell and lay still.

I must have remained there some time.

I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not

clearly understand how I came there. My terror had fallen from me

like a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from

its fastener. A few minutes before, there had only been three real

things before me--the immensity of the night and space and nature, my

own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it

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

abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to

the other. I was immediately the self of every day again--a decent,

ordinary citizen. The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the

starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream. I asked myself

had these latter things indeed happened? I could not credit it.

I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My

mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their

strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the

arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside

him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was

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

meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge.

Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit

smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying

south--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of

people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little

row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real

and so familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic!

Such things, I told myself, could not be.

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

experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of

detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all

from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time,

out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling

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

dream.

But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the

swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise of

business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. I

stopped at the group of people.

"What news from the common?" said I.

There were two men and a woman at the gate.

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

"What news from the common?" I said.

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

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

gate. "What's it all abart?"

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

from Mars?"

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

three of them laughed.

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

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

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

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

the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could

collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The

dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained

neglected on the table while I told my story.

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

"they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl. They may keep

the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out

of it. . . . But the horror of them!"

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

hand on mine.

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

My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw

how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.

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

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

"They can scarcely move," I said.

I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had

told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves

on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational

difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three

times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would

weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength

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

indeed, was the general opinion. Both _The Times_ and the _Daily

Telegraph_, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both

overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.

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

or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars.

The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians

indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their

bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that

such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able

to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.

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

reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine and

food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring

my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.

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

"They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror.

Perhaps they expected to find no living things--certainly no

intelligent living things."

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

kill them all."

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my

perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner

table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet

anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white

cloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days

even philosophical writers had many little luxuries--the crimson-purple

wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of

it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's

rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in

his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless

sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow,

my dear."

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

eat for very many strange and terrible days.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FRIDAY NIGHT

The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and

wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing

of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first

beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social

order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses

and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand

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

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

London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were

at all affected by the new-comers. Many people had heard of the

cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it

certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany

would have

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 741