War of the Worlds - Bk1, Ch9 (The War of the Worlds)

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04War of the Worlds by H.

05G.

06Wells Book 1, Chapter 9 The Fighting Begins Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense.

07It was a day of lassitude, too hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating barometer.

08I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in sleeping, and I rose early.

09I went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but toward the common there was nothing stirring but a lark.

10The milkman came as usual.

11I heard the rattle of his chariot, and I went round to the side gate to ask the latest news.

12He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns were expected.

13Then a familiar, reassuring note.

14I heard a train running towards Woking.

15They aren't to be killed, said the milkman, if that can possibly be avoided.

16I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a while, and then strolled in to breakfast.

17It was a most unexceptional morning.

18My neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day.

19It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable, he said.

20It would be curious to know how they live on another planet.

21We might learn a thing or two.

22He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic.

23At the same time he told me of the burning of the pinewoods about the Bifleet golf links.

24They say, he said, that there's another of those blessed things fallen there, number two.

25But one's enough, surely.

26This law cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything settled.

27He laughed with an air of the greatest humour as he said this.

28The woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me.

29They will be hot underfoot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf, he said, and then grew serious over.

30Poor Ogilvy.

31After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common.

32Under the railway bridge, I found a group of soldiers, sappers, I think.

33Men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf.

34They told me that no one was allowed over the canal, and looking across the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the cardigan men standing sentinel there.

35I talked with these soldiers for a time.

36I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening.

37None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the vaguest idea of them, so that they plied me with questions.

38They said that they did not know who had authorised the movement of the troops.

39Their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the horse guards.

40The 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.

41I described the heat-trade to them, and they began to argue among themselves.

42Crawl up under cover and rush them, say I, said one.

43Get out, said another.

44What's cover against this here heat?

45Sticks to cook you.

46What we've got to do is to go as near as the ground all at us, and then drive a trench.

47Blow you trenches.

48You always want trenches.

49You ought to have been born a rabbit, snippy.

50Ain't they got any necks then, said a third, abruptly a little contemplative, dark man smoking a pipe.

51I repeated my description.

52Octopuses, said he.

53That's what I calls them.

54Talk about fishers of men.

55Fighters of fish it is this time.

56It ain't no murder killing beasts like that, said the first speaker.

57Why not shell the darn things straight off and finish them, said the little dark man.

58You can't tell what they might do.

59Where's your shell?

60Where's your shell, said the first speaker.

61Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once.

62So they discussed it.

63After a while I left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.

64But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning, and of the longer afternoon.

65I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsall and Cobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities.

66The soldiers I addressed did not know anything.

67The officers were mysterious as well as busy.

68I 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.

69The soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsall lock up and leave their houses.

70I 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.

71About 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, Ogilvie, and the others.

72But there was little I didn't know.

73The Martians did not show an inch of themselves.

74They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous streamer of smoke.

75Apparently they were busy getting readily for a struggle.

76Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success, was the stereotyped formula of the papers.

77A sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole.

78The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we should of the lowing of a cow.

79I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me.

80My imagination became belligerent and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways.

81Something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back.

82It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time.

83They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs.

84About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey or Adalston.

85I learned that the smouldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, in the hope of destroying that object before it opened.

86It was only about five, however, that a field gun reached Cobham for use against the first body of Martians.

87About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the summer house, 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.

88Close 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.

89The 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.

90One 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 at my study window.

91I and my wife stood amazed.

92Then I realised 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.

93At that, I gripped my wife's arm, and, without ceremony, ran her out into the road.

94Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for.

95We can't possibly stay here, I said, and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common.

96But where are we to go?

97said my wife in terror.

98I thought perplexed.

99Then I remembered her cousins in Leatherhead.

100Leatherhead!

101I shouted above the sudden noise.

102She looked away from me downhill.

103The people were coming out of their houses, astonished.

104How are we to get to Leatherhead?

105she said.

106Down the hill, I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge.

107Three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College.

108Two others dismounted and began running from house to house.

109The sun, shining through the smoke that drove up the tops of the trees, seemed blood-red and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.

110Stop here!

111I said.

112You are safe here.

113And I started off at once for the spotted dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart.

114I ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the hill would be moving.

115I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what was going on behind his house.

116A man stood with his back to me, talking to him.

117I must have a pound, said the landlord, and I have no one to drive it.

118I'll give you two, said I over the stranger's shoulder.

119For what?

120And I'll bring it back by midnight, I said.

121Lord, said the landlord, what's the hurry?

122I'm selling my bit of a pig.

123Two pounds and you'll bring it back?

124What's going on now?

125I explained hastily that I had to leave my home and so secured the dog cart.

126At the time it did not seem to me nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his.

127I took care to have the cart there and then, drove it off down the road, and leaving it in the charge of my wife and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, such plate as we had, and so forth.

128The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this, and the palings up the road glowed red.

129While I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars came running up.

130He was going from house to house, warning people to leave.

131He was going on as I came out of my front door, lugging my treasures, done up in a tablecloth.

132I shouted after him, What news?

133He 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.

134A sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hit him for a moment.

135I ran to my neighbour'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.

136I 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.

137In another moment, we were clear of the smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill, towards Old Woking.

138In front was a quiet, sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign.

139I saw the doctor's cart ahead of me.

140At the bottom of the hill, I turned my head to look up the hillside I was leaving.

141Thick streamers of black smoke, shot with threads of red fire, were driving up into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green tree-trops eastward.

142The smoke already extended far away to the east and west, to the Bifleet Pinewoods eastward, and to Woking on the west.

143The road was dotted with people running towards us.

144And 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.

145Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range of their heat ray.

146I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my attention to the horse.

147When I looked back again, the second hill had hidden the black smoke.

148I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave him a loose rein, until Woking and Send lay between us and that quivering tumult.

149I overtook and passed the doctor between Woking and Send.

150End of chapter 9 End of chapter 9