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

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 newcomers. 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 done.

In London that night poor Henderson’s telegram describing the

gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his

evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving

no reply—the man was killed—decided not to print a special edition.

Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were

inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to

whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping;

working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were

being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes love-making, students sat over their books.

Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and

dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger,

or even an eyewitness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of

excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most

part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on

as it had done for countless years—as though no planet Mars existed

in the sky. Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was

the case.

In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and

going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were

alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most

ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was

selling papers with the afternoon’s news. The ringing impact of

trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled

with their shouts of “Men from Mars!” Excited men came into the

station about nine o’clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more

disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling

Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and

saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the

direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving

across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath

fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the common that any

disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas burning

on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the

common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake

till dawn.

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but

the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or

two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness

and crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now

and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship’s searchlight swept

the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that

big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay

about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise

of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.

So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre,

sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,

was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around

it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few

dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there.

Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of

excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not

crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still

flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that

would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain,

had still to develop.

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless,

indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and

ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the

starlit sky.

About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and

deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a

second company marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of

the common. Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on

the common earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be

missing. The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and

was busy questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities

were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. About

eleven, the next morning’s papers were able to say, a squadron of

hussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan

regiment started from Aldershot.

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road,

Woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the

northwest. It had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness

like summer lightning. This was the second cylinder.