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| The War of the Worlds: The heat-ray: Chapter five |
Most of the spectators had gathered in one
or two groups —one a little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in
the direction of Chobham. Evidently, they shared my mental conflict. There were
few near me. One man I approached—he was, I perceived, a neighbor of mine,
though I did not know his name—and accosted. But it was scarcely a time for
articulate conversation. ‘What ugly brutes!’ he said. ‘Good God! What ugly
brutes!’ He repeated this over and over again. ‘Did you see a man in the pit?’
I said, but he made no answer to that. We became silent and stood watching for
a time side by side, deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another’s
company. Then I shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the
advantage of a yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he
was walking towards Woking. The sunset faded to twilight before anything
further happened. The crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to
grow, and I heard now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards
Chobham dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.
It was
this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I suppose the new
arrivals from Woking also helped to restore confidence. At any rate, as the
dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the sand pits began a movement
that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder
remained unbroken. Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance,
stop, watch, and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin
irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns. I,
too, on my side began to move towards the pit. Then I saw some cabmen and
others had walked boldly into the sand pits and heard the clatter of hoofs and
the gride of wheels. I saw a lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then,
within thirty yards of the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I
noted a little black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.
This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since the
Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, intelligent
creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching them with signals,
that we too were intelligent.
Flutter,
flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. It was too far
for me to recognize anyone there, but afterward, I learned that Ogilvy, Stent,
and Henderson were with others in this attempt at communication. This little
group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the
now almost complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures
followed it at discreet distances. Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a
quantity of luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct
puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air. This
smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so bright that
the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown common towards
Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken abruptly as these puffs
arose and to remain the darker after their dispersal. At the same time, a faint
hissing sound became audible. Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people
with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of
small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose,
their faces flashed out pallid green and faded again as they vanished. Then
slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise.
Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light
seemed to flicker out from it.
Forthwith
flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang
from the scattered group of men. It was
as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It
was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire. Then, by the
light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their
supporters turning to run. I stood staring, not as yet realizing that this was
death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that
it was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of
light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat
passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry furze bush became
with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away towards Knaphill, I saw the
flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings suddenly set alight.
It was sweeping around swiftly and
steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I
perceived it coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched and was too
astounded and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle of a fire in the sandpits
and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as
if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather
between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits
the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a crash far away to
the left where the road from Woking station opens out on the common. Forthwith the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, dome-like object sank
slowly out of sight into the pit. All this had happened with such swiftness
that I had stood motionless, dumbfounded, and dazzled by the flashes of light.
Had that death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me to
my surprise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me suddenly
dark and unfamiliar. The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness,
except where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the
early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the stars were
mustering, and in the west, the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish-blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came out sharp and
black against the western afterglow. The Martians and their appliances were
altogether invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror
wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and glowed
still, and the houses towards Woking station were sending up spires of flame
into the stillness of the evening air.
Nothing was changed save for that and a
terrible astonishment. The little group of black specks with the flag of white
had been swept out of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed
to me, had scarcely been broken. It came to me that I was upon this dark
common, helpless, unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon
me from without, came—fear. With an effort, I turned and began a stumbling run
through the heather. The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror
not only of the Martians but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an
extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a
child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back. I remember I
felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death—as swift as the
passage of light—would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike
me down.
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