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| The War of the Worlds: The Cylinder opens: Chapter four |
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' ‘home, 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, someone.
‘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 around me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides.
There was a general movement backward. 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-colored eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass
that framed them, the head of the
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, and 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 month, 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 for further developments. The common
round the sand pits were 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 but 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.
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