War of the Worlds - Bk1, Ch8 (The War of the Worlds)

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04War of the Worlds by H.

05G.

06Wells Book 1 Chapter 8 Friday Night The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order, with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong.

07If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the working sand pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation of stent, or of the three or four cyclists or London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the newcomers.

08Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.

09In London that night, poor Henderson's telegram describing the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no reply, the man was killed, decided not to print a special edition.

10Even within the five-mile circle, the great majority of people were inert.

11I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to whom I spoke.

12All over the district, people were dining and supping, working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lane, love-making, students sat over their books.

13Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the public houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eyewitness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro.

14But for the most part, the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years, as though no planet Mars existed in the sky.

15Even at Woking Station and Horsall and Cobham, that was the case.

16In Woking Junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way.

17A boy from the town, trenching on Smith's Monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's news.

18The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of, Men for a boss!

19Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might have done.

20People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsall.

21A red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening.

22It was only round the edge of the common that any disturbance was perceptible.

23There were half a dozen villas burning on the Woking border.

24There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake till dawn.

25A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going, but the crowd remaining, both on the Coburn and Horsall bridges.

26One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians, but they never returned, for now and again a light ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept the common, and the heat ray was ready to follow.

27Save for such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day.

28A noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.

29So you have the state of things on Friday night.

30In the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder.

31But the poison was scarcely working yet.

32Around it, in a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contoured attitudes here and there.

33Here and there was a burning bush or tree.

34Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe, the inflammation had not crept as yet.

35In the rest of the world, the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years.

36The fever of war, that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.

37All night long, the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.

38About eleven, a company of soldiers came through Horsall, and deployed along the edge of the common to form a cordon.

39Later, a second company marched through Cobham to deploy on the north side of the common.

40Several officers from the Incommon barracks had been on the common earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.

41The colonel of the regiment came to the Cobham bridge, and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight.

42The military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business.

43About eleven, the next morning's papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars, two maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started from Aldershot.

44A few seconds after midnight, the crowd in the Chertsey Road, woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the north-west.

45It had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning.

46This was the second cylinder.

47End of chapter 8