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

by a

thread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling

into the field to my left. It was the third falling star!

 

Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced

out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst

like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth and

bolted.

 

A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down

this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as

rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps,

treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling

accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric

machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The flickering

light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my

face as I drove down the slope.

 

At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then

abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving

rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it

for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it

to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision—a moment of

bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red

masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of

the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp

and bright.

 

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod,

higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and

smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering

metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel

dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling

with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly,

heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear

almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards

nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently

along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave.

But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on

a tripod stand.

 

Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted,

as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were

snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared,

rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard

to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went

altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse’s head

hard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled

over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung

sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.

 

I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in

the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck

was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black

bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still

spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went

striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.

 

Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere

insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing

metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which

gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange

body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen

hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable

suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge

mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of

green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster

swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

 

So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the

lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.

 

As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the

thunder—“Aloo! Aloo!”—and in another minute it was with its

companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I

have no doubt this Thing in the field 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 watching, by

the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about

in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning,

and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into

clearness again. Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the

night swallowed them up.

 

I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some

time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to

a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.

 

Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter’s hut of wood,

surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled to my feet at

last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a

run for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people

hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I desisted,

and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way,

succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into

the pine woods towards Maybury.

 

Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my

own house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It

was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming

infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in

columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage.

 

If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I

should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street

Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that

night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical

wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin,

deafened and blinded by the storm.

 

I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as

much motive as I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a

ditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out

into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed,

for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy

torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me

reeling back.

 

He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I

could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the

stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to

win my way up the hill. I went close up to the fence on the left and

worked my way along its palings.

 

Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of

lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair

of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the

flicker of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next

flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not

shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay

crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung violently

against it.

 

Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before

touched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his

heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The

lightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I

sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose

conveyance I had taken.

 

I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my

way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house.

Nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there

still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up

against the drenching hail. So far as I could see by the flashes, the

houses about me were mostly uninjured. 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 had not the courage to shout or to go to them. I

let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door,

staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down. My imagination

was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body

smashed against the fence.

 

I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall,

shivering violently.