“They can scarcely move,” I said.
I 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. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. On
the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is
on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times
more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His
own body would be a cope of lead to him, therefore. That, indeed, was
the general opinion. Both _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.
The 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’. The
invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians
indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their
bodies. And, 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.
But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning
was dead against the chances of the invaders. With wine and food, the
confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I
grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.
“They have done a foolish thing,” said I, fingering my wineglass. “They
are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they
expected to find no living things—certainly no intelligent living
things.”
“A shell in the pit,” said I, “if the worst comes to the worst, will
kill them all.”
The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive
powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with
extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife’s sweet anxious face
peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its
silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical
writers had many little luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass,
are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts
with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the
short-sighted timidity of the Martians.
So 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. “We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.”
I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat
for very many strange and terrible days.
VIII.
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. If
on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle
with a radius of five miles round the Woking 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
new-comers. Many 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.
In 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.
Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were
inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to
whom I spoke. All 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 lanes
love-making, students sat over their books.
Maybe 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
eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a
shouting, and a running to and fro; but 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. Even
at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was the case.
In 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. A boy
from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was selling papers with
the afternoon’s news. The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle
of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of “Men
from Mars!” Excited men came into the station about nine o’clock with
incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might
have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside
the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark
dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of
smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious
than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the
common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen
villas burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the
houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there
kept awake till dawn.
A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the
crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One 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. Save 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. A noise of
hammering from the pit was heard by many people.
So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre,
sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,
was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it
was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few
dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there.
Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of
excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept
as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it
had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently
clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to
develop.
All 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.
About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and deployed
along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a second company
marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the common.
Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common
earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.
The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy
questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities were
certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. About 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.
A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking,
saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest. It
had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer
lightning. This was the second cylinder.
IX.
THE FIGHTING BEGINS.
Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of
lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating
barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in
sleeping, and I rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast and
stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring but
a lark.
The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot and I went
round to the side gate to ask the latest news. He told me that during
the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns
were expected. Then—a familiar, reassuring note—I heard a train running
towards Woking.
“They aren’t to be killed,” said the milkman, “if that can possibly be
avoided.”
I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then
strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My
neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to
destroy the Martians during the day.
“It’s a pity they make themselves so unapproachable,” he said. “It
would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might
learn a thing or two.”
He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his
gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. At the same time he
told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet Golf Links.
“They say,” said he, “that there’s another of those blessed things
fallen there—number two. But one’s enough, surely. This lot’ll cost the
insurance people a pretty penny before everything’s settled.” He
laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this. The
woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to
me. “They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil
of pine needles and turf,” he said, and then grew serious over “poor
Ogilvy.”
After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the
common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers—sappers, I
think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and
showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf.
They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the
road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing
sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of
my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None of them had seen
the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they
plied me with questions. They said that they did not know who had
authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute
had arisen at the Horse Guards. The 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. I
described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among
themselves.
“Crawl up under cover and rush ’em, say I,” said one.
“Get aht!” said another. “What’s cover against this ’ere ’eat? Sticks
to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground’ll let
us, and then drive a trench.”
“Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha’ been
born a rabbit, Snippy.”
“Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third, abruptly—a little,
contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.