War of the Worlds - Bk1, Ch4 (The War of the Worlds)

01This is a LibriVox recording.

02All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

03For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

04War of the Worlds by H.

05G.

06Wells Book 1, Chapter 4 The Cylinder Opens When I returned to the common, the sun was setting.

07Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons were returning.

08The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky, a couple of hundred people perhaps.

09There were raised voices, and some sort of a struggle appeared to be going on about the pit.

10Strange imaginings passed through my mind.

11As I drew nearer, I heard Stent's voice.

12Keep back!

13Keep back!

14A boy came running towards me.

15It's moving!

16he said to me as he passed.

17A screwing!

18And a screwing out!

19I don't like it!

20I'm going home, I am!

21I went on to the crowd.

22There 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.

23He's fallen in the pit!

24cried someone.

25Keep back!

26said several.

27The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through.

28Everyone seemed greatly excited.

29I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit.

30I say, said Ogilvy, help keep these idiots back.

31We don't know what's in the compounded thing, you know.

32I 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.

33The crowd had pushed him in.

34The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within.

35Nearly two feet of the shining screw projected.

36Somebody blundered against me, and I narrowly missed being pitched on top of the screw.

37I turned, and as I did so, the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell onto the gravel with a ringing concussion.

38I struck my elbow into the person behind me and turned my head towards the thing again.

39For a moment, that circular cavity seemed perfectly black.

40I had the sunset in my eyes.

41I think everyone expected to see a man emerge, possibly something a little unlike a terrestrial man, but in all essentials a man.

42I know I did.

43But looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow.

44Grayish, billowy movements, one above another.

45And then two luminous disks, like eyes.

46Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up and out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me.

47And then another.

48A sudden chill came over me.

49There was a loud shriek from a woman behind.

50I 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.

51I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me.

52I heard inarticulate exclamations on all side.

53There was a general movement backwards.

54I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit.

55I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, stent among them.

56I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me.

57I stood petrified and staring.

58A big, greyish, rounded bulk, the size perhaps of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.

59As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

60Two large, dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly.

61The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded and had, one might say, a face.

62There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted and dropped saliva.

63The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively.

64A lank, tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder.

65Another swayed in the air.

66Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance.

67The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip.

68The absence of brow ridges.

69The absence of a chin beneath the wedge-like lower lip.

70The incessant quivering of its mouth.

71The gorgon groups of tentacles.

72The tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere.

73The evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth.

74Above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes.

75Were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous.

76There was something fungoid on its oily brown skin.

77Something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements.

78Unspeakably nasty.

79Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.

80Suddenly the monster vanished.

81It had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit.

82With a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather.

83I heard it give a peculiar thick cry.

84And forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture.

85I turned.

86And running madly made for the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away.

87But I run slantingly and stumbling.

88For I could not avert my face from these things.

89There, among the young pine trees and firs bushes, I stopped panting and waited further developments.

90The common round the sand pits was 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.

91And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a round black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit.

92It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun.

93Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible.

94Suddenly he vanished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me.

95I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him that my fears overruled.

96Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made.

97Anyone coming along the road from Cobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight.

98A 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.

99The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the burning sky, and in the sandpits was a row of deserted vehicles, with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground.

100End of chapter 4