“It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a time I was inclined
to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the
house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton
Church.
Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or
four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light
filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through
a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the
wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the
first time.
The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed
over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet.
Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the
window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered
with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was
broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the
greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this
ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with
a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating
blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering
from the walls above the kitchen range.
As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body
of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing
cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible
out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery.
Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.
“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars, has
struck this house and buried us under the ruins!”
For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:
“God have mercy upon us!”