War of the Worlds - Bk1, Ch5 (The War of the Worlds)

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04War of the Worlds by H.

05G.

06Wells Book 1 Chapter 5 The Heat Ray After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of fascination paralysed my actions.

07I remained standing, knee-deep in the heather, staring at the mound that hid them.

08I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.

09I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate longing to peer into it.

10I began walking, therefore, in a big curve, seeking some point of vantage, and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid these newcomers to our earth.

11Once, a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn.

12And afterwards, a thin rod rose, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disc that spun with a wobbling motion.

13What could be going on there?

14Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups.

15One a little crowd towards Woking, and the other a knot of people in the direction of Cobham.

16Evidently, they shared my mental conflict.

17There were few near me.

18One man I approached.

19He was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name, and accosted him.

20But it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.

21What ugly brutes!

22he said.

23Good God!

24What ugly brutes!

25He repeated this over and over again.

26Did you see the man in the pit?

27I said.

28But he made no answer to that.

29We became silent, and stood watching for a time, side by side, deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company.

30Then I shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me an advantage of a yard or more of elevation, and when I looked for him presently, he was walking towards Woking.

31The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened.

32The crowd, far away on the left towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I heard now a faint murmur from it.

33The little knot of people towards Cobham dispersed.

34There was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.

35It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore confidence.

36At any rate, as the dust came on a slow, intermittent movement from the sandpits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken.

37Vertical 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 attendant horns.

38I, too, on my side, began to move towards the pit.

39Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sandpits and heard the clatter of hooves and the grind of wheels.

40I saw a lad trundling off the barrel of apples, and then, within thirty yards of the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsall, I noted a little black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.

41This was the deputation.

42There 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.

43Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left.

44It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent and Henderson were with others in this attempt at communication.

45This 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 at a discrete distance.

46Suddenly 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.

47This 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 the dispersal.

48At the same time a faint hissing sound became audible.

49Beyond 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.

50As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished.

51Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise.

52Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

53Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men.

54It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them, and flashed into white flame.

55It was as if each man was suddenly, and momentarily, turned into fire.

56Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run.

57I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man, in that little distant crowd.

58All 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.

59And as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry firs bush became, with one dull thud, a mass of flames.

60And far away, towards Knapp Hill, I saw flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings suddenly set alight.

61It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sort of heat.

62I perceived it coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied to stir.

63I heard the crackle of fire in the sandpits, and the sudden squeal of a horse that was suddenly stilled.

64Then it was as if an invisible, yet intensely heated figure were drawn through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sandpits, the dark ground smoked and crackled.

65Something fell with a crash far away to the left, where the road from working station opens out on the common.

66Forthwith, the hissing and humming ceased, and the black dome-like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.

67All of this had happened with such swiftness that I had stopped motionless, dumbfounded, and dazzled by the flashes of light.

68Had that death swept through a full circle, it must have inevitably slain me in my surprise.

69But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me, suddenly dark and unfamiliar.

70The undulating common now seemed dark almost to blackness, except where its roadway lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early night.

71It was dark and suddenly void of men.

72Overhead, the stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish-blue.

73The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsal came out sharp and black against the western afterglow.

74The Martians and their appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror wobbled.

75patches 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.

76Nothing was changed, save for that and a terrible astonishment.

77The 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.

78It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless, unprotected, and alone.

79Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came fear.

80With an effort, I turned and began a stumbling run through the heather.

81The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panicked terror, not only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me.

82Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do.

83Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back.

84I 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.

85End of chapter 5 and I was able to leave.

86to the end of chapter 5 and I was able to take a look at the take a look at the end of chapter 5 end of chapter 5 end of chapter 5 end of chapter 5 and I was able to take a look at the end of chapter 5 and I was able to I