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23 - The Work of Fifteen Days - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six, The Work of fifteen Days. For some time
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  Speaker 1: I stood tottering on the mound, regardless of my safety.
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  Speaker 1: Within that noisome den from which I had emerged. I
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  Speaker 1: had thought, with a narrow intensity, only of our immediate security.
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  Speaker 1: I had not realized what had been happening to the world.
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  Speaker 1: Had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I
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  Speaker 1: had expected to see sheen in ruins. I found about
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  Speaker 1: me the landscape, weird and lurid of another planet. For
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  Speaker 1: that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range
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  Speaker 1: of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate
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  Speaker 1: know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel,
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  Speaker 1: returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work
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  Speaker 1: of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house.
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  Speaker 1: I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently
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  Speaker 1: grew quite clear in my mind that oppressed me for
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  Speaker 1: many days. A sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I
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  Speaker 1: was no longer a master, but an animal among the
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  Speaker 1: animals under the Martian heel. With us, it would be
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  Speaker 1: as with them to lurk and watch, to run and hide,
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  Speaker 1: the fear and Empire of Man had passed away. But
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  Speaker 1: so soon as this strangeness had been realized, it passed,
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  Speaker 1: and my dominant motive became the hunger of my long
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  Speaker 1: and dismal fast. In the direction away from the pit,
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  Speaker 1: I saw beyond a red covered wall a patch of
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  Speaker 1: garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I
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  Speaker 1: went knee deep and sometimes neck deep in the red weed.
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  Speaker 1: The density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense
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  Speaker 1: of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and
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  Speaker 1: when I attempted to clamber it, I found I could
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  Speaker 1: not live to my feet to the crest. So I
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  Speaker 1: went along by the side of it and came to
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  Speaker 1: a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get
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  Speaker 1: to the top and tumble into the garden I coveted.
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  Speaker 1: Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs,
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  Speaker 1: and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and,
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  Speaker 1: scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through
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  Speaker 1: scarlet and crimson trees towards que. It was like walking
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  Speaker 1: through an avenue of gigantic blood drops. Possessed with two
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  Speaker 1: ideas to get more food and to limp as soon
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  Speaker 1: and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed,
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  Speaker 1: unearthly region of the pit. Some way farther, in a
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  Speaker 1: grassy place, was a group of mushrooms, which also I devoured.
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  Speaker 1: And then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing
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  Speaker 1: shallow water where meadows used to be. These fragments of
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  Speaker 1: nourishment so served only to wet my hunger. At first
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  Speaker 1: I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer,
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  Speaker 1: but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the
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  Speaker 1: tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly, this extraordinary growth
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  Speaker 1: encountered water. Its straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled for cunderity.
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  Speaker 1: Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of
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  Speaker 1: the Way and Thames, and its swiftly growing and titanic
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  Speaker 1: water fronds speedily choked both those rivers. At Putney, as
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  Speaker 1: I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a
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  Speaker 1: tangle of this weed, and at Richmond too, the Thames
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  Speaker 1: water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the
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  Speaker 1: meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the water spread, the
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  Speaker 1: weed followed them until the ruined villas of the Thames
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  Speaker 1: Valley were for a time lost in this red swamp,
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  Speaker 1: whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the
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  Speaker 1: martians had caused was concealed. In the end, the red
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  Speaker 1: weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread, a
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  Speaker 1: cankering disease, due, it is believed to the action of
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  Speaker 1: certain bacteria presently seized upon it. Now, by the action
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  Speaker 1: of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting
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  Speaker 1: power against bacterial diseases. They never succumb without a severe struggle.
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  Speaker 1: But the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.
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  Speaker 1: The fronds became bleached and then shriveled and brittle. They
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  Speaker 1: broke off at the least touch, and the waters that
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  Speaker 1: had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out
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  Speaker 1: to sea. My first act on coming to this water was,
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  Speaker 1: of course, to slake my thirst. I drank a great
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  Speaker 1: deal of it, and, moved by an impulse, gnawed some
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  Speaker 1: fronds of red weed, but they were watery and had
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  Speaker 1: a sickly metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently
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  Speaker 1: shallow for me to wadhe securely, although the red weed
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  Speaker 1: impeded my feet a little, but the flood evidently got
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  Speaker 1: deeper towards the river, and I turned back to Mortlake.
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  Speaker 1: I managed to make out the road by means of
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  Speaker 1: occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and
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  Speaker 1: so presently I got out of this spade and made
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  Speaker 1: my way to the hill, going up towards Roehampton, and
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  Speaker 1: came out on Putney Common. Here the scenery changed from
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  Speaker 1: the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar.
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  Speaker 1: Patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and
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  Speaker 1: in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly
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  Speaker 1: undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed,
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  Speaker 1: as if they had been left for a day by
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  Speaker 1: the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. The
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  Speaker 1: red weed was less abundant. The tall trees along the
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  Speaker 1: lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted for
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  Speaker 1: food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided
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  Speaker 1: a couple of silent houses, but they had already been
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  Speaker 1: broken into and ransacked. I rested for the remainder of
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  Speaker 1: the daylight in a shrubbery, being in my enfeebled condition
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  Speaker 1: too fatigued to push on. All this time I saw
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  Speaker 1: no human beings and no signs of the Martians. I
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  Speaker 1: encountered a couple of hungry looking dogs, but both hurried
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  Speaker 1: circatuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton,
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  Speaker 1: I had seen two human skeletons, not bodies, but skeletons
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  Speaker 1: picked clean. And in the woods by me I found
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  Speaker 1: the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits,
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  Speaker 1: and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed
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  Speaker 1: parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to
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  Speaker 1: be got from them. After sunset I struggled on along
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  Speaker 1: the road towards Putney, where I think the heat ray
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  Speaker 1: must have been used for some reason, And in the
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  Speaker 1: garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes
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  Speaker 1: sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked
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  Speaker 1: down upon Putney and the river. The aspect of the
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  Speaker 1: place in the dusk was singularly desolate, blackened trees, blackened,
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  Speaker 1: desolate ruins, and down the hill the sheets of the
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  Speaker 1: flooded river red tinged with the weed and over all silence.
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  Speaker 1: It filled me with indescribable terror to think how swiftly,
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  Speaker 1: that desolating change had come. For a time, I believed
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  Speaker 1: that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that
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  Speaker 1: I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard
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  Speaker 1: by the top of Putney Hill, I came upon another
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  Speaker 1: skeleton with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the body. As I proceeded, I became
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  Speaker 1: more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was
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  Speaker 1: save for such stragglers as myself already accomplished in this
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  Speaker 1: part of the world. The martians, I thought, had gone
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  Speaker 1: on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it
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  Speaker 1: might be they had gone northward. End of Section twenty three.