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saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these last few

days. There's lots will take things as they are--fat and stupid; and

lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong, and

that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things are so

that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak,

and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make

for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and

submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you've

seen the same thing. It's energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean

inside out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety.

And those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of--what is

it?--eroticism."

He paused.

"Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train

them to do tricks--who knows?--get sentimental over the pet boy who

grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to

hunt us."

"No," I cried, "that's impossible! No human being----"

"What's the good of going on with such lies?" said the

artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What nonsense to

pretend there isn't!"

And I succumbed to his conviction.

"If they come after me," he said; "Lord, if they come after me!"

and subsided into a grim meditation.

I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring

against this man's reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one

would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his--I, a

professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a

common soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that I

had scarcely realised.

"What are you doing?" I said presently. "What plans have you

made?"

He hesitated.

"Well, it's like this," he said. "What have we to do? We have to

invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be

sufficiently secure to bring the children up. Yes--wait a bit, and

I'll make it clearer what I think ought to be done. The tame ones

will go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big,

beautiful, rich-blooded, stupid--rubbish! The risk is that we who keep

wild will go savage--degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . .

You see, how I mean to live is underground. I've been thinking about

the drains. Of course those who don't know drains think horrible

things; but under this London are miles and miles--hundreds of

miles--and a few days rain and London empty will leave them sweet and

clean. The main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone.

Then there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may

be made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You

begin to see? And we form a band--able-bodied, clean-minded men.

We're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings

go out again."

"As you meant me to go?"

"Well--I parleyed, didn't I?"

"We won't quarrel about that. Go on."

"Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we

want also--mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies--no blasted

rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again,

and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They

ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of

disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be

happy. Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it

bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be

London. And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the

open when the Martians keep away. Play cricket, perhaps. That's how

we shall save the race. Eh? It's a possible thing? But saving the

race is nothing in itself. As I say, that's only being rats. It's

saving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing. There men like

you come in. There's books, there's models. We must make great safe

places down deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry

swipes, but ideas, science books. That's where men like you come in.

We must go to the British Museum and pick all those books through.

Especially we must keep up our science--learn more. We must watch

these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it's all working,

perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we must

leave the Martians alone. We mustn't even steal. If we get in their

way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know.

But they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they

have all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin."

The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.

"After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before--Just

imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly

starting off--Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em. Not

a Martian in 'em, but men--men who have learned the way how. It may

be in my time, even--those men. Fancy having one of them lovely

things, with its Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control!

What would it matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the

run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open their

beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see them

hurrying, hurrying--puffing and blowing and hooting to their other

mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case. And swish,

bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes

the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own."

For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the

tone of assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my

mind. I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny

and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader

who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position,

reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine,

crouching fearfully in the bushes and listening, distracted by

apprehension. We talked in this manner through the early morning

time, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky

for Martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where

he had made his lair. It was the coal cellar of the place, and when I

saw the work he had spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten

yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney

Hill--I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his

powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a day. But I believed in him

sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at

his digging. We had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed

against the kitchen range. We refreshed ourselves with a tin of

mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. I found a

curious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady

labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in my mind, and

presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I worked there all

the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a purpose again. After

working an hour I began to speculate on the distance one had to go

before the cloaca was reached, the chances we had of missing it

altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should dig this long

tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of

the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to me, too, that

the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a needless length of

tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these things, the

artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.

"We're working well," he said. He put down his spade. "Let us

knock off a bit" he said. "I think it's time we reconnoitred from the

roof of the house."

I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his

spade; and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so

did he at once.

"Why were you walking about the common," I said, "instead of being

here?"

"Taking the air," he said. "I was coming back. It's safer by

night."

"But the work?"

"Oh, one can't always work," he said, and in a flash I saw the man

plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. "We ought to reconnoitre

now," he said, "because if any come near they may hear the spades and

drop upon us unawares."

I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof

and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were

to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under

shelter of the parapet.

From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney,

but we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the

low parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the

trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and

dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was

strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing

water for their propagation. About us neither had gained a footing;

laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of

laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond

Kensington dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the

northward hills.

The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still

remained in London.

"One night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric light

in order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze,

crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and

shouting till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came

they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham

and looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there.

It must have given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road

towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened

to run away."

Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his

grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently

of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than

half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to

understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid

on doing nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no

question that he personally was to capture and fight the great

machine.

After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed

disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was

nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had

eaten he went away and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit

these, and his optimism glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming

as a great occasion.

"There's some champagne in the cellar," he said.

"We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy," said I.

"No," said he; "I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We've a

heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength

while we may. Look at these blistered hands!"

And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing

cards after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing

London between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we

played for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to

the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable,

I found the card game and several others we played extremely

interesting.

Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of

extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before

us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the

chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid

delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough

chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a

lamp.

After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the

artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars.

He was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had

encountered in the morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a

less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with

my health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable

intermittence. I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the

lights of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the

Highgate hills.

At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The

northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington

glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed

up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London

was black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale,

violet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For

a space I could not understand it, and then I knew that it must be

the red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that

realisation my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of

things, awoke again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear,

glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the

darkness of Hampstead and Highgate.

I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the

grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the

midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent

revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a

certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring