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| The War of the Worlds: The heat-ray in the Chobham Road: Chapter six |
By half-past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may have been a crowd of
three hundred people or more at this place, besides those who had left the road
to approach the Martians nearer. There
were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under
instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter them from approaching
the cylinder. There was some booing from those more thoughtless and excitable
souls to whom a crowd is always an occasion for noise and horseplay. Stent and
Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, had telegraphed from
Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians emerged, for the help of a
company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence. After
that, they returned to lead that ill-fated advance. The description of their
death, as it was seen by the crowd, tallies very closely with my own
impressions: the three puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the
flashes of flame.
But that a crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only the fact that a
hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the Heat-Ray saved them.
Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few yards higher, none could
have lived to tell the tale. They saw the flashes and the men falling and an
invisible hand, as it were, lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through
the twilight. Then, with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the
pit, the beam swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech
trees that line the road, splitting the bricks, smashing the windows,
firing the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the
gable of the house nearest the corner. In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of
the igniting trees, the panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly
for some moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road and
single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then came a
crying from the common. There were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a mounted
policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over his
head, screaming.
‘They’re coming!’ a woman shrieked, incontinently everyone was turning and pushing at those behinds to clear their way to Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep. When the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled there and left to die amid the terror and the darkness.
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