The War of the Worlds

urking 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

f 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

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

d 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

Black Smoke. But later I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get away. So soon as I r

re," he repeate

o 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 s

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 th

red 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

towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was

ps, 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 ter

ain. I went through a shrubbery, and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, a

ows 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

ity. We stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell into,

rkness, 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 de

on no dead, though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Shee

d villa, and I found nothing eatable left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, howev

ak, 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 bea

beer out of the same bottle. The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough, for pushi

se 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 hea

had happened. Then things came to me slow

" asked the cura

nswered him

hed crockery from the dresser. You can't possibly move

g seemed deadly still, but once something near us, some plaster or broken brickwork, sli

rate, when presentl

aid. "But

n!" said

tened

to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the h

nd then the light filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through a triangular aperture between a

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 ru

sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as ci

interpretation da

e fifth shot from Mars, has struck thi

ate was silent, an

e mercy

esently whimpe

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 m

ing. 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 towar