The War of the Worlds

HE S

with multitudes of dog-roses. The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving the evening very peaceful an

ere tied to the Pit by sheer heaviness, and at the utmost could but crawl a little out of it; but she answered only in monosyllables. Had it not been for my pro

got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night. I was even afraid that that last fusillade I

ot and close as the day. Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath stirred the shrubs about us. My cousins' man lit both lamps. Happily, I knew the road intimately. M

vening's fighting. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I s

to Pyrford, where a knot of people stood with their backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond th

ord Church the glare came into view again, and the trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. Then I heard midnigh

ne. I felt a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green

the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like

have ever seen. The thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electri

took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in

of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the

peared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the hors

neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of

oung pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking abo

e flickering of the lightning, in blin

other minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I ha

moving about in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning, and as it came and went their figures gr

e time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up th

every chance of cover, I made a run for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I desist

ng to find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming infrequent

leet to Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that night the strangeness of things about m

d bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for the s

speak to him. So heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to

istinguish clearly how the man lay, the flicker of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man,

eel for his heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The lightning flashed for a third time, an

was burning on the hillside, though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the dr

to them. I let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, a

e staircase with my back to