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| The war of the worlds: The fighting begins: Chapter Nine |
‘It’s a pity they make themselves so
unapproachable,’ he said. ‘It would be curious to know how they live on another
planet; we might learn a thing or two.’ He came up to the fence and extended a
handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was
enthusiastic. At the same time, he told me of the burning of the pine woods
about the Byfleet Golf Links. ‘They say,’ said he, ‘that there’s another of
those blessed things fallen there—number two. But one’s enough, surely. This
lot’ll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything’s settled.’
He laughed with an air of the greatest good humor as he said this. The woods,
he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me. ‘They will
be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and
turf,’ he said, and then grew serious over ‘poor Ogilvy.’ After breakfast,
instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the
railway bridge, I found a group of soldiers—sappers, I think, men in small round
caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned and showing their blue shirts, dark
trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over
the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the
Cardigan men standing sentinel there.
I talked
with these soldiers for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the
previous evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the
vaguest ideas of them so that they plied me with questions. They said that
they did not know who had authorized the movements of the troops; their idea
was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a
great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the
peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the
Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves. ‘Crawl up under
cover and rush ‘em, say I,’ said one. ‘Get at!,’ said another. ‘What’s cover
against this ‘ere ‘eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near
as the ground’ll let us, and then drive a trench.’ ‘Blow yer trenches! You
always want trenches; you ought to ha’ been born a rabbit Snippy.’ ‘‘Ain’t they
got any necks, then?’ said a third, abruptly— a little, contemplative, dark
man, smoking a pipe. I repeated my description.
‘Octopuses,’
said he, ‘that’s what I call ‘em. Talk about fishers of men—fighters of fish
it is this time!’ ‘It ain’t no murder killing beasts like that,’ said the first
speaker. ‘Why not shell the darned things strike off and finish ‘em?’ said the
little dark man. ‘You can tell what they might do.’ ‘Where're your shells?’
said the first speaker. ‘There ain’t no time. Do it in a rush, that’s my tip,
and do it at once.’ So they discussed it. After a while, I left them and went
on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could. But I will
not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer
afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even
Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military
authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn’t know anything; the officers were
mysterious as well as busy. I found people in the town quite secure again in
the presence of the military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the
tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had
made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.
I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself, I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half-past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn’t know. The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently, they were busy getting ready for a struggle. ‘Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success,’ was the stereo-typed formula of the papers. A sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the lowing of a cow. I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became belligerent, and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back. It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time. They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs.
About three o’clock there began the thud
of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned that the
smoldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being
shelled, in the hope of destroying that object before it opened. It was only
about five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham for use against the first
body of Martians. About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the
summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon us, I
heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately after a gust of
firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent rattling crash, quite close
to us, that shook the ground; and, starting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops
of the trees about the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the
tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the
mosque had vanished, and the roofline of the college itself looked as if a
hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it. One of our chimneys cracked as if a
shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came clattering down the tiles and
made a heap of broken red fragments upon the flower bed by my study window.
I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realized that the crest of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians’ Heat-Ray now that the college was cleared out of the way. At that, I gripped my wife’s arm, and without ceremony ran her out into the road. Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go upstairs myself for the box she was clamoring for. ‘We can’t possibly stay here,’ I said; and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common. ‘But where are we to go?’ said my wife in terror. I thought perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead. ‘Leatherhead!’ I shouted above the sudden noise. She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of their houses, astonished. ‘How are we to get to Leatherhead?’ she said. Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College; two others dismounted and began running from house to house. The sun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood red and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.
‘Stop here,’ said I; ‘you are safe
here"; and I started off at once for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the
landlord had a horse and dog cart. I ran, for I perceived that in a moment
everyone on this side of the hill would be moving. I found him in his bar,
quite unaware of what was going on behind his house. A man stood with his back
to me, talking to him. ‘I must have a pound,’ said the landlord, ‘and I’ve no
one to drive it.’ ‘I’ll give you two,’ said I, over the stranger’s shoulder.
‘What for?’ ‘And I’ll bring it back by midnight,’ I said. ‘Lord!’ said the
landlord; ‘what’s the hurry? I’m selling my bit of a pig. Two pounds, and you
bring it back? What’s going on now?’ I explained hastily that I had to leave my
home, and so secured the dog cart. At the time it did not seem to me nearly so
urgent that the landlord should leave his. I took care to have the cart there
and then, drove it off down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife and
servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such plate as we had,
and so forth. The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this,
and the palings up the road glowed red. While I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came running up.
He was going from house to house, warning
people to leave. He was going on as I came out of my front door, lugging my
treasures, done up in a tablecloth. I shouted after him: ‘What news?’ He
turned, stared, bawled something about ‘crawling out in a thing like a dish
cover,’ and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest. A sudden whirl of
black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment. I ran to my
neighbor’s door and rapped to satisfy myself of what I already knew, that his
wife had gone to London with him and had locked up their house. I went in
again, according to my promise, to get my servant’s box, lugged it out, clapped
it beside her on the tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped
up into the driver’s seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of
the smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill
towards Old Woking. In front were a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead
on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw
the doctor’s cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill, I turned my head to
look at the hillside I was leaving.
Thick streamers of black smoke shot with
threads of red fire were driving up into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green
treetops eastward. The smoke already extended far away to the east and west—to
the By- Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was
dotted with people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct
through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine gun that was
presently stilled and an intermittent cracking of rifles. Apparently, the
Martians were setting fire to everything within range of their HeatRay. I am
not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my attention to the horse.
When I looked back again the second hill had hidden the black smoke. I slashed
the horse with the whip and gave him a loose rein until Woking and Send lay
between us and that quivering tumult. I overtook and passed the doctor between
Woking and Send.
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