第 9 页

device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight

line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton

Church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have

done, swerved aside, blundered on and collapsed with tremendous force

into the river out of my sight.

A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam,

mud, and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of

the Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into

steam. In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but

almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend upstream. I saw

people struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting

faintly above the seething and roar of the Martian's collapse.

For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need

of self-preservation. I splashed through the tumultuous water,

pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the

bend. Half a dozen deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the

confusion of the waves. The fallen Martian came into sight

downstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged.

Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through

the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and

vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash

and spray of mud and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and

struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless purposelessness of

these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for

its life amid the waves. Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid

were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.

My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious

yelling, like that of the thing called a siren in our manufacturing

towns. A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me

and pointed. Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with

gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey.

The Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly.

At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until

movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead under the surface as

long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly

growing hotter.

When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the

hair and water from my eyes, the steam was rising in a whirling white

fog that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was

deafening. Then I saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified

by the mist. They had passed by me, and two were stooping over the

frothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade.

The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two

hundred yards from me, the other towards Laleham. The generators of

the Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way

and that.

The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of

noises--the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling

houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the

crackling and roaring of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to

mingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and

fro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent

white, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. The

nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint

and pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro.

For a moment perhaps I stood there, breast-high in the almost

boiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. Through

the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river

scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs

hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running to and

fro in utter dismay on the towing path.

Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping

towards me. The houses caved in as they dissolved at its touch, and

darted out flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar. The Ray

flickered up and down the towing path, licking off the people who ran

this way and that, and came down to the water's edge not fifty yards

from where I stood. It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the

water in its track rose in a boiling weal crested with steam. I

turned shoreward.

In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point had

rushed upon me. I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded,

agonised, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the

shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell

helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare

gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames.

I expected nothing but death.

I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a

score of yards of my head, driving straight into the loose gravel,

whirling it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense,

and then of the four carrying the debris of their comrade between

them, now clear and then presently faint through a veil of smoke,

receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of

river and meadow. And then, very slowly, I realised that by a miracle

I had escaped.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE

After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial

weapons, the Martians retreated to their original position upon

Horsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris of

their smashed companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray

and negligible victim as myself. Had they left their comrade and

pushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and

London but batteries of twelve-pounder guns, and they would certainly

have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their approach;

as sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent would have been as

the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago.

But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its

interplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours brought them

reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now

fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with

furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position until,

before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the

hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black

muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area--perhaps twenty

square miles altogether--that encircled the Martian encampment on

Horsell Common, through charred and ruined villages among the green

trees, through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a

day ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs

that were presently to warn the gunners of the Martian approach. But

the Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger of

human proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either

cylinder, save at the price of his life.

It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the

afternoon in going to and fro, transferring everything from the second

and third cylinders--the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third

at Pyrford--to their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above

the blackened heather and ruined buildings that stretched far and

wide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast

fighting-machines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work

there far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green smoke

that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and

even, it is said, from Banstead and Epsom Downs.

And while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next

sally, and in front of me Humanity gathered for the battle, I made my

way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning

Weybridge towards London.

I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting down-stream;

and throwing off the most of my sodden clothes, I went after it,

gained it, and so escaped out of that destruction. There were no

oars in the boat, but I contrived to paddle, as well as my parboiled

hands would allow, down the river towards Halliford and Walton, going

very tediously and continually looking behind me, as you may well

understand. I followed the river, because I considered that the water

gave me my best chance of escape should these giants return.

The hot water from the Martian's overthrow drifted downstream with

me, so that for the best part of a mile I could see little of either

bank. Once, however, I made out a string of black figures hurrying

across the meadows from the direction of Weybridge. Halliford, it

seemed, was deserted, and several of the houses facing the river were

on fire. It was strange to see the place quite tranquil, quite

desolate under the hot blue sky, with the smoke and little threads of

flame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon. Never before

had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive

crowd. A little farther on the dry reeds up the bank were smoking and

glowing, and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late

field of hay.

For a long time I drifted, so painful and weary was I after the

violence I had been through, and so intense the heat upon the water.

Then my fears got the better of me again, and I resumed my paddling.

The sun scorched my bare back. At last, as the bridge at Walton was

coming into sight round the bend, my fever and faintness overcame my

fears, and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down, deadly sick,

amid the long grass. I suppose the time was then about four or five

o'clock. I got up presently, walked perhaps half a mile without

meeting a soul, and then lay down again in the shadow of a hedge. I

seem to remember talking, wanderingly, to myself during that last

spurt. I was also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no

more water. It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I

cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead

worried me excessively.

I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that probably

I dozed. I became aware of him as a seated figure in soot-smudged

shirt sleeves, and with his upturned, clean-shaven face staring at

a faint flickering that danced over the sky. The sky was what is

called a mackerel sky--rows and rows of faint down-plumes of

cloud, just tinted with the midsummer sunset.

I sat up, and at the rustle of my motion he looked at me quickly.

"Have you any water?" I asked abruptly.

He shook his head.

"You have been asking for water for the last hour," he said.

For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I

dare say he found me a strange enough figure, naked, save for my

water-soaked trousers and socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders

blackened by the smoke. His face was a fair weakness, his chin

retreated, and his hair lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his low

forehead; his eyes were rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring.

He spoke abruptly, looking vacantly away from me.

"What does it mean?" he said. "What do these things mean?"

I stared at him and made no answer.

He extended a thin white hand and spoke in almost a complaining

tone.

"Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The

morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my

brain for the afternoon, and then--fire, earthquake, death! As if it

were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work---- What

are these Martians?"

"What are we?" I answered, clearing my throat.

He gripped his knees and turned to look at me again. For half a

minute, perhaps, he stared silently.

"I was walking through the roads to clear my brain," he said. "And

suddenly--fire, earthquake, death!"

He relapsed into silence, with his chin now sunken almost to his

knees.

Presently he began waving his hand.

"All the work--all the Sunday schools--What have we done--what has

Weybridge done? Everything gone--everything destroyed. The church!

We rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence!

Why?"

Another pause, and he broke out again like one demented.

"The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!" he shouted.

His eyes flamed, and he pointed a lean finger in the direction of

Weybridge.

By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous

tragedy in which he had been involved--it was evident he was a

fugitive from Weybridge--had driven him to the very verge of his

reason.

"Are we far from Sunbury?" I said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"What are we to do?" he asked. "Are these creatures everywhere?

Has the earth been given over to them?"

"Are we far from Sunbury?"

"Only this morning I officiated at early celebration----"

"Things have changed," I said, quietly. "You must keep your head.

There is still hope."

"Hope!"

"Yes. Plentiful hope--for all this destruction!"

I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first,

but as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave place to their

former stare, and his regard wandered from me.

"This must be the beginning of the end," he said, interrupting me.

"The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall

call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide

them--hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!"

I began to understand the position. I ceased my laboured

reasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand

on his shoulder.

"Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good

is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes

and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you