第 3 页

"He's fallen in the pit!" cried some one.

"Keep back!" said several.

The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one

seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the

pit.

"I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We don't know

what's in the confounded thing, you know!"

I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was,

standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.

The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly

two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me,

and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I

turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of

the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck

my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the

Thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black.

I had the sunset in my eyes.

I think everyone expected to see a man emerge--possibly something a

little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know

I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the

shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two

luminous disks--like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey

snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the

writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another.

A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman

behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,

from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my

way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to

horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate

exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards.

I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found

myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running

off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and

ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was

rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and

caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The

mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had,

one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless

brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole

creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular

appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the

strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with

its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a

chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this

mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the

lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness

of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above

all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at

once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was

something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy

deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this

first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and

dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the

cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great

mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith

another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the

aperture.

I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees,

perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for

I could not avert my face from these things.

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped,

panting, and waited further developments. The common round the sand

pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a half-fascinated

terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at

the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a renewed

horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of

the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but

showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now he

got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until

only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have

fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to

go back and help him that my fears overruled.

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the

heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming

along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the

sight--a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more

standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes,

behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in

short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of

sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black

against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted

vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the

ground.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAT-RAY

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the

cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind

of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in

the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground

of fear and curiosity.

I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate

longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,

seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand

heaps that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin

black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset

and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up,

joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a

wobbling motion. What could be going on there?

Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a

little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the

direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict.

There were few near me. One man I approached--he was, I perceived,

a neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name--and accosted.

But it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.

"What ugly _brutes_!" he said. "Good God! What ugly brutes!" He

repeated this over and over again.

"Did you see a man in the pit?" I said; but he made no answer to

that. We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side,

deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. Then I

shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a

yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was

walking towards Woking.

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The

crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I

heard now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards

Chobham dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from

the pit.

It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I

suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore

confidence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent

movement upon the sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather

force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained

unbroken. Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance,

stop, watch, and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin

irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated

horns. I, too, on my side began to move towards the pit.

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand

pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a

lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards

of the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little

black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and

since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,

intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by

approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the

left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards

I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this

attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance

dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost

complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed

it at discreet distances.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous

greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which

drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was

so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of

brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to

darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after

their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became

audible.

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag

at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small

vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose,

their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished.

Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud,

droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the

ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one

to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some

invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was

as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering

and falling, and their supporters turning to run.

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping

from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it

was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of

light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft

of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry

furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away

towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden

buildings suddenly set alight.

It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death,

this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming

towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded

and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits

and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then

it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn

through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a

curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled.

Something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from

Woking station opens out on the common. Forth-with the hissing and

humming ceased, and the black, dome-like object sank slowly out of

sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood

motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that

death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in

my surprise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me

suddenly dark and unfamiliar.

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except

where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the

early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the

stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale,

bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the

roofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the western

afterglow. The Martians and their appliances were altogether

invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror

wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and

glowed still, and the houses towards Woking station were sending up

spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air.

Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The

little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out

of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me,

had scarcely been broken.

It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless,

unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from

without, came--fear.

With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the

heather.

The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only

of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an

extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping

silently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to

look back.

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being

played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety,

this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap

after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD

It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay

men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in some way they are