War of the Worlds - Bk1, Ch7 (The War of the Worlds)

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04War of the Worlds by H.

05G.

06Wells Book 1.

07Chapter 7.

08How I Reached Home For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling through the heather.

09All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians.

10That pitiless sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended, and smote me out of life.

11I came into the road between the crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.

12At last I could go no further.

13I was exhausted with the violence of my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside.

14That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks.

15I fell and lay still.

16I must have remained there for some time.

17I sat up, strangely perplexed.

18For a moment, perhaps, I could not clearly understand how I came there.

19My terror had fallen from me like a garment.

20My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its fastener.

21A few minutes before, there had only been three real things before me.

22The immensity of the night, and space, and nature.

23My own feebleness and anguish.

24And the near approach of death.

25Now it was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered abruptly.

26There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other.

27I was immediately the self of every day again, a decent, ordinary citizen.

28The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream.

29I asked myself, had these latter things indeed happened?

30I could not credit it.

31I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge.

32My mind was blank wonder.

33My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their strength.

34I dare say I staggered drunkenly.

35A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared.

36Beside him ran a little boy.

37He passed me, wishing me good night.

38I was minded to speak to him, but did not.

39I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble, and went over the bridge.

40Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, fire-lit smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying south.

41Clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone.

42A dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses, in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace.

43It was all so real and so familiar.

44And that behind me?

45It was frantic, fantastic.

46Such things I told myself could not be.

47Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods.

48I do not know how far my experience is common.

49At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me.

50I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

51This feeling was very strong upon me that night.

52Here was another side of my dream.

53But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away.

54There was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight.

55I stopped at the group of people.

56What news from the common?

57said I.

58There were two men and a woman at the gate.

59Eh?

60said one of the men, turning.

61What news from the common?

62I said.

63Ain't you just been there?

64asked the men.

65People seem fair silly about the common, said the woman over the gate.

66What's it all about?

67Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?

68said I.

69The creatures from Mars?

70Quite enough, said the woman over the gate.

71Thanks.

72And all three of them laughed.

73I felt foolish and angry.

74I tried and found I could not tell them what I had seen.

75They laughed again at my broken sentences.

76You'll hear more yet, I said, and went on to my home.

77I started my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I.

78I went into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and as soon as I could collect myself sufficiently, I told her the things I had seen.

79The dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the table while I told my story.

80There is one thing, I said, to allay the fears I had aroused.

81They are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl.

82They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it.

83But the horror of them!

84Don't, dear, said my wife, knitting her brows and putting a hand in mine.

85Poor Ogilvy, I said, to think he may be lying dead there.

86My wife, at least, did not find my experience incredible.

87When I saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.

88They may come here, she said again and again.

89I pressed her to take wine and tried to reassure her.

90They can scarcely move, I said.

91I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the Earth.

92In particular, I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty.

93On the surface of the Earth, the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars.

94A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same.

95His own body would be a cope of lead to him.

96That, indeed, was the general opinion.

97Both the Times and the Daily Telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.

98The atmosphere of the Earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen, or far less argon, whichever way one likes to put it, than does Mars.

99The invigorating influences of this excessive oxygen upon the Martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies.

100And in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.

101But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders.

102With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.

103They have done a foolish thing, I said, fingering my wine-glass.

104They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror.

105Perhaps they expected to find no living things, certainly no intelligent living things.

106A shell in the pit, said I, if the worst comes to the worst, will kill them all.

107The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erithism.

108I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now.

109My dear wife's sweet, anxious face peering at me from under the pink lampshade.

110The white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture, for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries.

111The crimson-purple wine in my glass are photographically distinct.

112At the end of it I sat tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness and denouncing the short-sighted timidity of the Martians.

113So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food.

114We will pick them to death tomorrow, my dear.

115I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.

116End of chapter 7