Book Two: The Earth under the Martians
Chapter One
Under Foot
IN the first book I have wandered so much from my
own adventures to tell of the experiences of my
brother that all through the last two chapters I and
the curate have been lurking in the empty house at
Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke.
There I will resume. We stopped there all Sunday
night and all the next day—the day of the panic—in a
little island of daylight, cut off by the Black
Smoke from the rest of the world. We could do
nothing but wait in aching inactivity during those
two weary days. 1
My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I
figured her at Leatherhead, terrified, in danger,
mourning me already as a dead man. I paced the rooms
and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off
from her, of all that might happen to her in my
absence. My cousin I knew was brave enough for any
emergency, but he was not the sort of man to realise
danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed
now was not bravery, but circumspection. My only
consolation was to believe that the Martians were
moving Londonward and away from her. Such vague
anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I
grew very weary and irritable with the curate’s
perpetual ejaculations; I tired of the sight of his
selfish despair. After some ineffectual remonstrance
I kept away from him, staying in a room—evidently a
children’s schoolroom—containing globes, forms, and
copybooks. When he followed me thither, I went to a
box room at the top of the house and, in order to be
alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in. 2
We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all
that day and the morning of the next. There were
signs of people in the next house on Sunday
evening—a face at a window and moving lights, and
later the slamming of a door. But I do not know who
these people were, nor what became of them. We saw
nothing of them next day. The Black Smoke drifted
slowly riverward all through Monday morning,
creeping nearer and nearer to us, driving at last
along the roadway outside the house that hid us. 3
A Martian came across the fields about midday,
laying the stuff with a jet of superheated steam
that hissed against the walls, smashed all the
windows it touched, and scalded the curate’s hand as
he fled out of the front room. When at last we crept
across the sodden rooms and looked out again, the
country northward was as though a black snowstorm
had passed over it. Looking towards the river, we
were astonished to see an unaccountable redness
mingling with the black of the scorched meadows. 4
For a time we did not see how this change affected
our position, save that we were relieved of our fear
of the Black Smoke. But later I perceived that we
were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get
away. So soon as I realised that the way of escape
was open, my dream of action returned. But the
curate was lethargic, unreasonable. 5
“We are safe here,” he repeated; “safe here.” 6
I resolved to leave him—would that I had! Wiser now
for the artilleryman’s teaching, I sought out food
and drink. I had found oil and rags for my burns,
and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I
found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to
him that I meant to go alone—had reconciled myself
to going alone—he suddenly roused himself to come.
And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we
started about five o’clock, as I should judge, along
the blackened road to Sunbury. 7
In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were
dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as
well as men, overturned carts and luggage, all
covered thickly with black dust. That pall of
cindery powder made me think of what I had read of
the destruction of Pompeii. We got to Hampton Court
without misadventure, our minds full of strange and
unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our
eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had
escaped the suffocating drift. We went through
Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro under
the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in
the distance towards Hampton, and so we came to
Twickenham. These were the first people we saw. 8
Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and
Petersham were still afire. Twickenham was uninjured
by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, and there were
more people about here, though none could give us
news. For the most part they were like ourselves,
taking advantage of a lull to shift their quarters.
I have an impression that many of the houses here
were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too
frightened even for flight. Here too the evidence of
a hasty rout was abundant along the road. I remember
most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap,
pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent
carts. We crossed Richmond Bridge about half past
eight. We hurried across the exposed bridge, of
course, but I noticed floating down the stream a
number of red masses, some many feet across. I did
not know what these were—there was no time for
scrutiny—and I put a more horrible interpretation on
them than they deserved. Here again on the Surrey
side were black dust that had once been smoke, and
dead bodies—a heap near the approach to the station;
but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we were
some way towards Barnes. 9
We saw in the blackened distance a group of three
people running down a side street towards the river,
but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the hill
Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town
of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke.
10
Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number
of people running, and the upperworks of a Martian
fighting-machine loomed in sight over the housetops,
not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at
our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must
immediately have perished. We were so terrified that
we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a
shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping
silently, and refusing to stir again. 11
But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not
let me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out
again. I went through a shrubbery, and along a
passage beside a big house standing in its own
grounds, and so emerged upon the road towards Kew.
The curate I left in the shed, but he came hurrying
after me. 12
That second start was the most foolhardy thing I
ever did. For it was manifest the Martians were
about us. No sooner had the curate overtaken me than
we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen
before or another, far away across the meadows in
the direction of Kew Lodge. Four or five little
black figures hurried before it across the
green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was
evident this Martian pursued them. In three strides
he was among them, and they ran radiating from his
feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to
destroy them, but picked them up one by one.
Apparently he tossed them into the great metallic
carrier which projected behind him, much as a
workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder. 13
It was the first time I realised that the Martians
might have any other purpose than destruction with
defeated humanity. We stood for a moment petrified,
then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a
walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a
fortunate ditch, and lay there, scarce daring to
whisper to each other until the stars were out. 14
I suppose it was nearly eleven o’clock before we
gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing
into the road, but sneaking along hedgerows and
through plantations, and watching keenly through the
darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the
Martians, who seemed to be all about us. In one
place we blundered upon a scorched and blackened
area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of
scattered dead bodies of men, burned horribly about
the heads and trunks but with their legs and boots
mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet,
perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and
smashed gun carriages. 15
Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the
place was silent and deserted. Here we happened on
no dead, though the night was too dark for us to see
into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my
companion suddenly complained of faintness and
thirst, and we decided to try one of the houses. 16
The first house we entered, after a little
difficulty with the window, was a small
semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable
left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was,
however, water to drink; and I took a hatchet, which
promised to be useful in our next housebreaking. 17
We then crossed to a place where the road turns
towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house
within a walled garden, and in the pantry of this
domicile we found a store of food—two loaves of
bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a
ham. I give this catalogue so precisely because, as
it happened, we were destined to subsist upon this
store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood
under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot
beans and some limp lettuces. This pantry opened
into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was
firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we
found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and
salmon, and two tins of biscuits. 18
We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark—for we
dared not strike a light—and ate bread and ham, and
drank beer out of the same bottle. The curate, who
was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly
enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep
up his strength by eating when the thing happened
that was to imprison us. 19
“It can’t be midnight yet,” I said, and then came a
blinding glare of vivid green light. Everything in
the kitchen leaped out, clearly visible in green and
black, and vanished again. And then followed such a
concussion as I have never heard before or since. So
close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous
came a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash and
rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the
plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing
into a multitude of fragments upon our heads. I was
knocked headlong across the floor against the oven
handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long
time, the curate told me, and when I came to we were
in darkness again, and he, with a face wet, as I
found afterwards, with blood from a cut forehead,
was dabbing water over me. 20
For some time I could not recollect what had
happened. Then things came to me slowly. A bruise on
my temple asserted itself. 21
“Are you better?” asked the curate in a whisper. 22
At last I answered him. I sat up. 23
“Don’t move,” he said. “The floor is covered with
smashed crockery from the dresser. You can’t
possibly move without making a noise, and I fancy
THEY are outside.” 24
We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely
hear each other breathing. Everything seemed deadly
still, but once something near us, some plaster or
broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.
Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic
rattle. 25
“That!” said the curate, when presently it happened
again. 26
“Yes,” I said. “But what is it?” 27
“A Martian!” said the curate. 28
I listened again. 29
“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. 30
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. 31
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.
32
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. 33
Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my
mind. 34
“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot
from Mars, has struck this house and buried us under
the ruins!” 35
For a time the curate was silent, and then he
whispered: 36
“God have mercy upon us!” 37
I heard him presently whimpering to himself. 38
Save for that sound we lay quite still in the
scullery; I for my part scarce dared breathe, and
sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of the
kitchen door. I could just see the curate’s face, a
dim, oval shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside
there began a metallic hammering, then a violent
hooting, and then again, after a quiet interval, a
hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises,
for the most part problematical, continued
intermittently, and seemed if anything to increase
in number as time wore on. Presently a measured
thudding and a vibration that made everything about
us quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and
shift, began and continued. Once the light was
eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became
absolutely dark. For many hours we must have
crouched there, silent and shivering, until our
tired attention failed.… 39
At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am
inclined to believe we must have spent the greater
portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger
was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to
action. I told the curate I was going to seek food,
and felt my way towards the pantry. He made me no
answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint
noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling
after me. 40
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