Latest / Daily Classic Science Fiction Books / 11 - At the Window - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells

Transcript

11 - At the Window - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Daily Classic Science Fiction Books

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, at the window. I have already said that
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: After a time I discovered that I was cold and wet,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and with little pools of water about me on the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: stair carpet. I got up, almost mechanically, went into the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: dining room and drank some whisky, And then I was
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: moved to change my clothes. After I had done that,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I went upstairs to my study. But why I did so,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I do not know. The window of my study looked
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: over the trees and the railway towards hawseall common. In
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the hurry of our departure, this window had been left open.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: The passage was dark, and by contrast with the picture
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway. The thunder
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: storm had passed, The towers of the Oriental College, and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: sand pits was visible across the light. Huge black shapes,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro. It seemed
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: indeed as if the whole country in that direction was
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: on fire, a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Every now and then a haze of smoke from some
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: nearer conflagragation drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I could not see what they were doing, nor the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: clear form of them, nor recognize the black objects they
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: were busied upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: though the reflections of it danced on the wall and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of burn
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: was in the air. I closed the door noiselessly and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: crept towards the window. As I did so, the view
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: opened out, until on the one hand it reached to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the houses about Woking Station, and on the other to
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the charred and blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a light down below the hill on the railway near
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the arch, and several of the houses along the Maybury
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: The light upon the railway puzzled me at first. There
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. Then
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Between these three main centers of light, the houses, the train,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and the burning county towards Chobham stretched irregular patches of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: dark country broke here and there by intervals of dimly
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: glowing and smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: black expanse set with fire. It reminded me more than
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: anything else, of the potteries at night. At first I
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: could distinguish no people at all, though I peered intently
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: for them. Later I saw, against the light of Woking
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Station a number of black figures hurrying one after the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: other across the line. And this was the little world
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: in which I had been living securely for years, this
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: fiery chaos. What had happened in the last seven hours,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I still did not know, Nor did I know, though
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I was beginning to guess the relation between these mechanical
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: colossi and the sluggish lumps I had seen disgorged from
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the cylinder. With a queer feeling of impersonal interest. I
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: turned my desk chair to the window, sat down and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: gigantic black things that were going to and fro in
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the glare about the sand pits. They seemed amazingly busy.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I began to ask myself what they could be, why
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing, I felt was impossible.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Or did a martian sit within each ruling directing using
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I began to compare the things to human machines, to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: ask myself, for the first time in my life, how
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: an iron clad or a steam engine would seem to
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: an intelligent lower animal. The storm had left the sky clear,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and over the smoke of the burning land, the little
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: fading pin point of Mars was dropping into the west.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: When a soldier came into my garden. I heard a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: slight scraping at the fence and rousing myself from the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: left that had fallen upon me. I looked down and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: saw him dimly clambering over the palings. At the sight
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: of another human being, my torpa passed, and I leaned
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: out of the window eagerly hissed, said I in a whisper.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: came over and across the lawn to the corner of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the house. He bent down and stepped softly. Who's there,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Where are you going? I asked, God knows are you
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: trying to hide? That's it? Come into the house, I said.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I went down, unfastened the door and let him in,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and locked the door again. I could not see his face.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: He was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned. My god,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: he said, as I drew him in. What has happened?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: And I asked, what hasn't? In the obscurity I could
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: see he made a gesture of despair. They wiped us out,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: simply wiped us out, he repeated, again and again. He
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room. Take some whiskey,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I said, pouring out a stiff dose. He drank it.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: head on his arms, and began to sob and weep
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: While I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Stood beside him, wondering. It was a long time before
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: he could steady his nerves to answer my questions. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. He was a driver
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: in the artillery and had only come into action about
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: seven At that time, firing was going on the common,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and it was said the first party of Martians were
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: metal shield. Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and became the first of the fighting machines. I had
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: seen the gun he drove had been unlimbered near Horsel
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: in order to command the sand pits, and its arrival
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: it was that had precipitated the action. As the limber
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole and came down, throwing him into a depression
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: behind him. The ammunition blew up. There was fire all
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: about him, and he found himself lying under a heap
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of charred dead men and dead horses. I lay still,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: he said, scared out of my wits, with the fore
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and the smell good, god like burnt meat. I was
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: hurt across the back by the fall of the horse,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and there I had to lie until I felt better,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: just like parade. It had been a minute before then
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: stumble bang, swish wiped out. He said he had hid
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: furtively across the common. The Cardigan men had tried a
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: rush in skirmishing order at the pit, simply to be
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: swept out of existence. Then the monster had risen to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: its feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: cowled human being. A kind of arm carried a complicated
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated, and out of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: the funnel of this there smoked the heat ray. In
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a few minutes, there was, so far as the soldier
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: could see, not a living thing left upon the common,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and every bush and tree upon it that was not
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: already a blackened skeleton was burning. The Huzzahs had been
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: he saw nothing of them. He heard the maxims rattle
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: for a time and then become still. The giant saved
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Woking Station and its cluster of houses until the last. Then,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in a moment, the heat ray was brought to bear,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the thing shut off the heat ray, and turning its
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: smoldering pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: did so, a second glittering titan built itself up out
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: of the pit. The second monster followed the first, and
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: at that the artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the hot heather ash towards Hawsel. He managed to get
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: alive into the ditch by the side of the road,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and so escaped Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: place was impassable, it seems, though, where a few people
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: alive there frantic for the most part, and many burned
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and scalded. He was turned aside by the fire and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall. As
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: one of the Martian giants returned he saw this one
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: pursue a man catch him up in one of its
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: steely tentacles and knock his head against the trunk of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: a rush for it and got over the railway embankment.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury in
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the hope of getting out of danger. London Wood people
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: survivors had made off towards Woking village and Send. He
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: had been consumed with thirst until he found one of
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the water mains near the railway arch smashed and the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: water bubbling out like a spring upon the road. That
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: was the story I got from him. Bit by bit
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: he grew calmer, telling me and trying to make me
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: see the things he had seen. He had eaten no
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: food since midday, he told me early in his narrative.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And I found some mutton and bread in the pantry
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: for fear of attracting the martians, and ever and again
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: our hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Things about us came darkly out of the darkness, and
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: grew distinct. It would seem that a number of men
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: see his face blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: was also. When we had finished eating, we went softly
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: upstairs to my study, and I looked again out of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the open window. One night, the valley had become a
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled. Now where flames
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: had been, there were now streamers of smoke. But the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn. Yet
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: here and there some object had had the luck to escape.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: A white railway signal, here the end of a greenhouse, there,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate, and so universal,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and shining with the growing light of the east. Three
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of the metallic giants stood about the pit, their cowls
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: rotating as though they were surveying the desolation. They had made.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapor streamed
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: up and out of it towards the brightening dawn, streamed up, whirled, broke,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and vanished. Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chopham.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: They became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of day. End of Section eleven