The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (best large ereader TXT) 📖

from him, staying in a room—evidently a

children’s schoolroom—containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When

he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house

and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.

 

We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and

the morning of the next. There were signs of people in the next house

on Sunday evening—a face at a window and moving lights, and later the

slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were, nor what

became of them. We saw nothing of them next day. The Black Smoke

drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer

and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house

that hid us.

 

A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff

with a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed

all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate’s hand as he fled

out of the front room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms

and looked out again, the country northward was as though a black

snowstorm had passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were

astonished to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of

the scorched meadows.

 

For a time we did not see how this change affected our position,

save that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But later

I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get

away. So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream

of action returned. But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable.

 

“We are safe here,” he repeated; “safe here.”

 

I resolved to leave him—would that I had! Wiser now for the

artilleryman’s teaching, I sought out food and drink. I had found oil

and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that

I found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I meant

to go alone—had reconciled myself to going alone—he suddenly roused

himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we

started about five o’clock, as I should judge, along the blackened

road to Sunbury.

 

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying

in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and

luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery

powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.

We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of

strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were

relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating

drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro

under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance

towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first

people we saw.

 

Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still

afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke,

and there were more people about here, though none could give us news.

For the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull

to shift their quarters. I have an impression that many of the houses

here were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even

for flight. Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along

the road. I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap,

pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. We crossed

Richmond Bridge about half past eight. We hurried across the exposed

bridge, of course, but I noticed floating down the stream a number of

red masses, some many feet across. I did not know what these were—

there was no time for scrutiny—and I put a more horrible

interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again on the Surrey

side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies—a heap

near the approach to the station; but we had no glimpse of the

Martians until we were some way towards Barnes.

 

We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running

down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed

deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the

town of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke.

 

Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people

running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in

sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood

aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must

immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go

on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate

crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again.

 

But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest,

and in the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a shrubbery,

and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds,

and so emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the

shed, but he came hurrying after me.

 

That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it

was manifest the Martians were about us. No sooner had the curate

overtaken me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen

before or another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew

Lodge. Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the

green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian

pursued them. In three strides he was among them, and they ran

radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to

destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed

them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much

as a workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder.

 

It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any

other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We stood for a

moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a

walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and

lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were

out.

 

I suppose it was nearly eleven o’clock before we gathered courage

to start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along

hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the

darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who

seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched

and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered

dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but

with their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty

feet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun

carriages.

 

Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent

and deserted. Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too

dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my

companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided

to try one of the houses.

 

The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the

window, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable

left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water

to drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our

next house-breaking.

 

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake.

Here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the

pantry of this domicile we found a store of food—two loaves of bread

in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this

catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to

subsist upon 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 wash-up kitchen, and in

this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly

a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of

biscuits.

 

We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark—for we dared not strike

a light—and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle.

The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly

enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength

by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us.

 

“It can’t be midnight yet,” I said, and then came a blinding glare

of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly

visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then followed such

a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the

heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash

of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the

plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of

fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor

against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long

time, the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness

again, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from

a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me.

 

For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things

came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.

 

“Are you better?” asked the curate in a whisper.

 

At last I answered him. I sat up.

 

“Don’t move,” he said. “The floor is covered with smashed crockery

from the dresser. You can’t possibly move without making a noise, and

I fancy THEY are outside.”

 

We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other

breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near

us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.

Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.

 

“That!” said the curate, when presently it happened again.

 

“Yes,” I said. “But what is it?”

 

“A Martian!” said the curate.

 

I listened again.

 

“It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a time I was

inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled

against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of

Shepperton Church.

 

Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or

four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light

filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through

a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in

the wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for

the first time.

 

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which

flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our

feet. Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the

top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor

was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the

house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was

evident the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting

vividly with this ruin