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

length of

tunnel. 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 us

knock off a bit” he said. “I think it’s time we reconnoitred from the

roof of the house.”

 

I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his

spade; and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so

did he at once.

 

“Why were you walking about the common,” I said, “instead of being

here?”

 

“Taking the air,” he said. “I was coming back. It’s safer by

night.”

 

“But the work?”

 

“Oh, one can’t always work,” he said, and in a flash I saw the man

plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. “We ought to reconnoitre

now,” he said, “because if any come near they may hear the spades and

drop upon us unawares.”

 

I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof

and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were

to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under

shelter of the parapet.

 

From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney,

but we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the

low parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the

trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and

dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was

strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing

water for their propagation. About us neither had gained a footing;

laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of

laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond

Kensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the

northward hills.

 

The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still

remained in London.

 

“One night last week,” he said, “some fools got the electric light

in order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze,

crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and

shouting till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came

they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham

and looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It

must have given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road

towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened

to run away.”

 

Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!

 

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his

grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently

of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than

half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to

understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid

on doing nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no

question that he personally was to capture and fight the great

machine.

 

After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed

disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was

nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had

eaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit

these, and his optimism glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming

as a great occasion.

 

“There’s some champagne in the cellar,” he said.

 

“We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,” said I.

 

“No,” said he; “I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We’ve a

heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength

while we may. Look at these blistered hands!”

 

And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing

cards after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing

London between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we

played for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to

the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable,

I found the card game and several others we played extremely

interesting.

 

Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of

extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before

us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the

chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the “joker” with vivid

delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough

chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a

lamp.

 

After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the

artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars.

He was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had

encountered in the morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a

less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with

my health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable

intermittence. I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights

of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the Highgate

hills.

 

At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The

northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington

glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed

up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was

black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a

space I could not understand it, and then I knew that it must be the

red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that

realisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of

things, awoke again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear,

glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the

darkness of Hampstead and Highgate.

 

I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the

grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the

midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent

revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a

certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring

exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was

filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined

dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into

London. There, it seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning

what the Martians and my fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the

roof when the late moon rose.