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24 - The War of The Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Adventure Books Library

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Chapter seven, The Man on Putney Hill. I spent that night in the
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inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed
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for the first time since my flight to Leatherhead. I will not tell the
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needless trouble I had breaking into that house. Afterwards I found the front door
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was on the latch, nor how I ransacked every room for food, until
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just on the verge of despair, in what seemed to me to be a
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servant's bedroom, I found a rat nor crust and two tins of pineapple.
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The place had been already searched and emptied. In the bar, I afterwards
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found some biscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked. The latter I could not
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eat they were too rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger but
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filled my pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating
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that part of London for food. In the night before I went to bed,
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I had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to window,
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peering out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I
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lay in bed, I found myself thinking consecutively a thing I do not remember
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to have done since my last argument with the Curate. During all the intervening
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time, my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional states,
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or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night, my brain reinforced,
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I suppose by the food I had eaten, grew clear again, and
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I thought three things struggled for possession of my mind, the killing of the
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Curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of my wife.
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The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall. I
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saw it simply as a thing done, a memory very infinitely disagreeable, but
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quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself then, as I see
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myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of
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a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no condemnation. Yet
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the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me in the silence of the night,
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with that sense of the nearness of God that sometimes comes into the stillness
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and the darkness. I stood my trial, my only trial. For that
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moment of wrath and fear. I retraced every step of our conversation from the
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moment when I had found him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst,
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and pointing to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge.
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We had been incapable of co operation. Grim chance had taken no heed
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of that. Had I foreseen, I should have left him at Haliford.
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But I did not foresee. And crime is to foresee and do. And
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I set this down, as I have set all this story down as it
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was. There were no witnesses. All these things I might have concealed,
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But I set it down, And the reader must form his judgment as he
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will. And when by an effort I had set aside that picture of a
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prostrate body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my
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wife. For the former, I had no data. I could imagine a
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hundred things, and so unhappily I could for the latter. And suddenly that
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night became terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the
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dark. I found myself praying that the heat ray might have suddenly and painlessly
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struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from Leatherhead,
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I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers. Had prayed
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as heathen's mutter charms when I was in extremity, But now I prayed indeed,
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pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God.
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Strangest in this that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had
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talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding
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place, a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for
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any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also
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prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this
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war has taught us pity, pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.
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The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern s sky glowed pink
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and was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs from the
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top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the panic
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torrent that must have poured London wood. On the Sunday night after the fighting
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began. There was a little two wheeled cart inscribed with the name of Thomas
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Lobb, greengrocer, New Malden with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk.
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There was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud, and at
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the top of West Hill a lot of blood stained glass about the overturned water
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trough. My movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had
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an idea of going to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the
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poorest chance of finding my wife, certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly,
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my cousins and she would have fled thence but it seemed to me I
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might find or learn there whither the surry people had fled. I knew I
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wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world
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of men, but I had no clear idea how the finding might be done.
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I was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner,
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I went under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes to the edge
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of Wimbledon Common, stretching wide and far. That dark expanse was lit in
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patches by yellow gorse and broom. There was no red weed to be seen,
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and as I prowled, hesitating on the verge of the open, the
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sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I came upon a
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busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. I stopped
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to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live,
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and presently turning. Suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, I
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beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes. I stood regarding this, I
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made a step towards it, and it rose up and became a man armed
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with a cutlass. I approached him slowly. He stood silent and motionless,
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regarding me. As I drew nearer, I perceived he was dressed in clothes
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as dusty and filthy as my own. He looked, indeed, as though
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he had been dragged to a culvert. Nearer I distinguished the green slime of
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ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny coally patches. His
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black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and
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sunken, so that at first I did not recognize him. There was a
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red cut across the lower part of his face. Stop when I was within
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ten yards of him, and I stopped. His voice was hoarse. Where
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do you come from, he said, I thought, surveying him. I
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come from Mortlake, I said, I was buried near the pit the Martians
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made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped. There
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is no food about here, he said. This is my country, all
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this hill, down to the river and back to Clapham and up to the
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edge of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are
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you going, I answered, slowly. I don't know, I said.
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I have been buried in the ruins of a house thirteen or fourteen days.
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I don't know what has happened. He looked at me doubtfully, then started
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and looked with a changed expression. I've no wish to stop about here,
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said I. I think I shall go to Leatherhead, for my wife was
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there. He shot out a pointing finger. It is you, said he
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the man from Woking, and you weren't killed at Weybridge. I recognized him
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at the same moment. You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.
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Good luck, he said, we are lucky ones. Fancy you. He
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put out a hand and I took it. I crawled up a drain,
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he said, but they didn't kill every one. And after they went away,
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I got off towards Walton across the fields. But it's not sixteen days
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altogether, and your hair is gray. He looked over his shoulders. Suddenly,
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only a rook, he said. One gets to know that birds have
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shadows these days. This is a bit open. Let us crawl under those
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bushes and talk. Have you seen any Martians? I said, Since I
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crawled out, they've gone away across lund he said, I guess they've got
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a bigger camp there. Of a night all over there Hampstead Way, the
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sky is alive with their lights. It's like a great city. And in
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the glare you can just see them moving By daylight you can't but nearer I
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haven't seen them. He counted on his fingers. Five days. Then I
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saw a couple across Hammersmith Way carrying something big. And the night before last,
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he stopped and spoke impressively. It was just a matter of lights,
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but it was something up in the air. I believe they've built a flying
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machine and a learning to fly. I stopped on hands and knees, for
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we had come to the bushes fly. Yes, he said, fly.
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I went on into a little bower and sat down. It is all over
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with humanity, I said. If they can do that, they will simply
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go round the world. He nodded, they will, but it will relieve
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things over here a bit. And besides, he looked at me. Aren't
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you satisfied at ease up with humanity? I am. We're down. We're
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beat. I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived
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at this fact, a fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke, I
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had still held a vague hope. Rather, I had kept a lifelong habit
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of mind. He repeated his words, we're beat. They carried absolute conviction.
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It's all over, he said. They've lost one, just one,
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and they've made their foot in good and crippled the greatest power in the world.
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They've walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was now
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accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming, these green
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stars. I've seen none these five or six days, but I've no doubt
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they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're under We're beat.
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I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in
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vain to devise some countervailing thought. This isn't a war, said the artilleryman.
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It never was a war any more than there's war between man and ants.
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Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory. After the tenth shot,
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they fired no more, at least until the first cylinder came. How do
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you know, said the artilleryman. I explained, he thought something wrong with
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the gun. He said, But what if there is, they'll get it
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right again. And even if there's a delay, how can it alter thee
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It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds, their cities, live
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their lives, have wars, revolutions until the men want them out of the
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way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we are
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now, just ants only, yes, I said, we're eatable ants.
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We sat looking at each other, and what will they do with us?
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I said, That's what I've been thinking. He said, that's what I've
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been thinking. After Weybridge, I went south thinking I saw what was up.
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Most of the people were hard at it, squealing and exciting themselves.
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But I'm not so fond of squealing. I've been in sight of death once
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or twice. I'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst
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death, it's just death. And it's the man that keeps on thinking comes
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through. I saw everyone tracking away south, says I, food won't last
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this way, and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like
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a sparrow goes for man. All round. He waved a hand to the
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horizon. They're starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other. He
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saw my face and halted awkwardly. No doubt, lots who have money have
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gone away to France, he said. He seemed to hesitate whether to apologize,
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met my eyes and went on, there's food all about here, canned
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things in shops, wines, spirits, mineral waters, and the water mains
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and drains are empty. Well, I was telling you what I was thinking.
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Here's intelligent things, I said, And it seems they want us for
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food first. They'll smash us up. Ships, machines, guns, cities,
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all the order and organization, all that will go. If we were
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the size of ants, we might pull through. But we're not. It's
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all too bulky to stop. That's the first certainty, eh, I assented,
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it is. I've thought it out very well. Then next at present
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we're caught as we're wanted. A martian has only to go a few miles
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to get a crowd on the run, And I saw one one day out
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by Wandsworth, picking houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they
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won't go on doing that. So soon as they've settled all our guns and
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ships, and smashed our railways and done all the things they are doing over
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there, they will begin catching a systematic picking the best and storing us in
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cages and things. That's what they will start doing in a bit. Lord.
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They haven't begun on us yet, don't you see that? Not begun?
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I exclaimed? Not begun. All that's happened so far as through our
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not having the sense to keep quiet, worrying them with guns and such foolery,
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and losing our heads and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any
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more safety than where we were. They don't want to bother us. Yet
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they're making their things, making all the things they couldn't bring with them,
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getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very likely that's why the
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cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of hitting those who are here,
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and instead of our rushing about blind on the howl or getting dynamite on
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the chance of busting them up, we've got to fix ourselves up according to
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the new state of affairs. That's how I figure it out. It isn't
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quite according to what a man wants for his species, but it's about what
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the facts point to. And that's the principle I acted upon. Cities,
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nations, civilization progress. It's all over. That game's up. We're beat.
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But if that is so, what is there to live for? The
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artilleryman looked at me for a moment. There won't be any more blessed concerts
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for a million years or so. There won't be any Royal Academy of Arts,
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and no light little feeds at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after,
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I reckon the game is up. If you've got any drawing room manners or
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a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping ahes, you'd better chuck
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them away. They ain't no further use. You mean, I mean that
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men like me are going on living for the sake of the breed. I
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tell you I'm grim set on living, and if I'm not mistaken. You'll
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show what insides you've got too before long. We aren't going to be exterminated.
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And I don't mean to be caught either, and tamed and fattened and
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bred like a thundering ox. Ugh, fancy those brown creepers. You don't
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mean to say I do. I'm going on under their feet. I've got
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it planned, I've thought it out. We men are beat we don't know
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enough. We've got to learn before we've got a chance. And we've got
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to live and keep independent while we learn. See, that's what has to
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be done. I stared, astonished and stirred profoundly by the man's resolution grit,
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God cried, I, but you are a man, indeed, And
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suddenly I gripped his hand. Ah, he said, with his eyes shining.
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I've thought it out, eh, go on, I said, Well,
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those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I'm getting ready.
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Mind you. It isn't all of us that are made for wild beasts,
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and that's what it's got to be. That's why I watched you.
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I have my doubts. You're slender. I didn't know that it was you
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you see, or just how you'd been buried all these the sort of people
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that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to
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live down that way, they'd be no good. They haven't any spirit in
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them, no proud dreams and no proud lusts. And a man who hasn't
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one or the other, Lord, what is he but funk and precautions.
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They just used to skidaddle off to work. I've seen hundreds of em bit
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of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season ticket
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train for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't working at businesses they were afraid
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to take the trouble to understand, skidaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in
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time for dinner, keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets and
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sleeping with the wives They married, not because they wanted them, but because
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they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little
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miserable skidaddle through the world lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents,
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and on Sundays, fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built
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for rabbits, well, the Martians will be just a god send to these
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nice, roomy cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After
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a week or so, chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs,
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they'll come and be caught cheerful. They'll be quite glad after a bit.
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They'll wonder what people did before there were martians to take care of them.
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And the bar loafers and mashers and singers. I can imagine them, I
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can imagine them, he said, with a sort of somber gratification. There'll
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be any amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There's hundreds of things
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I saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these last few
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days. There's lots will take things as they are, fat and stupid,
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and lots will be worried by a sort of fear, feeling that it's all
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wrong, and that they ought to be doing something now. Whenever things are
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so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the
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weak and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking always make for
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a sort of do nothing religion very pious and superior, and submit to persecution
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and the will of the lord. Very likely you've seen the same thing it's
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energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside out. These cages
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will be full of psalms and hymns and piety, and those of a less
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simple sort will work in a bit of what is it eroticism? He paused,
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Very likely these martians will make pets of some of them, train them
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to do tricks. Who knows, get sentimental over the pet boy who grew
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up and had to be killed. And some maybe they will trained a hunt
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us. No, I cried, that's impossible, no human being. What's
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the good of going on with such lies? Said the artilleryman. There's men
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who do it, cheerful, what nonsense to pretend there isn't? And I
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succumbed to his conviction. If they come after me, he said, Lord,
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if they come after me, and subsided into a grim meditation. I
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sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against this man's reasoning.
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In the days before the invasion, no one would have questioned my intellectual
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superiority to his. I a professed and recognized writer on philosophical themes, and
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he a common soldier. And yet he had already formulated a situation that I
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had scarcely realized, what do you do? I said, presently, what
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plans have you made? He hesitated. Well, it's like this, he
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said, what have we to do? We have to invent a sort of
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life where men can live and breed and be sufficiently secure to bring the children
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up. Yes, wait a bit, and I'll make it clearer what I
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think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts
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in a few generations. They'll be big, beautiful, rich, blooded,
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stupid rubbish. The risk is that we who keep wild will go savage,
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degenerate into a sort of big savage rat. You see, how I mean
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to live is underground. I've been thinking about the drains. Of course,
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those who don't know drains think horrible things. But under this, London and
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miles and miles, hundreds of miles and a few days rain and London empty
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will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are big enough and airy
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enough for any one. Then there's cellars, vaults, stores from which bolting
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passages may be made to the drains, and the railway tunnels and subways.
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Ey, you begin to see, and we form a band able, bodied,
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clean minded men. We're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts
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in. Weaklings go out again as you meant me to go, Well,
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I parleyed, didn't I We won't quarrel about that. Go on those who
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stop obey orders, able bodied, clean minded women. We want also mothers
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and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies, no blasted rolling eyes. We can't have
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any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome
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and mischievous have to die. They ought to die, They ought to be
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willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live
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and taint the race, and they can't be happy. Moreover, dying's none
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so dreadful. It's the funking makes it bad. And in all those places
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we shall gather, our district will be London, and we may even be
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able to keep a watch and run about in the open when the Martians keep
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away play cricket. Perhaps that's how we shall save the race. Eh,
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it's a possible thing. But saving the race is nothing in itself, as
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I say, that's only being rats. It's saving our knowledge and adding to
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it is the thing. There men like you come in. There's books,
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there's models. We must make great safe places, down deep and get all
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the books we can, not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas science books.
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That's where men like you come in. We must go to the British
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Museum and pick all those books through especially, we must keep up our science.
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Learn more. We must watch those Martians. Some of us must go
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as spies. When it's all working. Perhaps I will get caught, I
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mean. And the great thing is we must leave the Martians alone. We
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mustn't even steal. If we get in their way, we clear out.
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We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know, but
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they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they have all they
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want and think we're just harmless vermin. The artilleryman paused and laid a brown
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hand upon my arm. After all, it may not be so much we
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have to learn before. Just imagine this, four or five of their fighting
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machines suddenly starting off heat rays right and left, And not a martian in
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them, not a martian in em, but men, men who have learned
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the way. How it may be in my time, even those men fancy
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having one of them lovely things with its heat ray wide and free, fancy
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having it in control. What would it matter if you smash the smithereens at
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the end of the run. After a bust like that, I reckon,
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the martians will open their beautiful eyes. Can't you see them, man?
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Can't you see them hurrying, hurrying, puffing and blowing and hooting to their
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other mechanical affairs. Something out of gear in every case, And swish,
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bang, rattle, swish, just as they are fumbling over it, swish
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comes the heat ray, and behold, man has come back to his own.
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For a while, the imaginative daring of the artilleryman and the tone of
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assurance and courage he assumed completely dominated my mind. I believed unhesitatingly, both
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in his forecast of human death destiny and in the practicability of his astonishing scheme.
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And the reader who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position,
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reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject and mine. Crouching fearfully in
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the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension, we talked in this manner through
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the early morning time, and later crept out of the bushes, and after
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scanning the sky for martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where
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he had made his lair. It was the coal cellar of the place,
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and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon. It was
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a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main
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drain on Putney Hill. I had my first inkling of the gulf. Between
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his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a
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day, But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning
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until past midday. At his digging, we had a garden barrow and shot
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the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed ourselves with a tin
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of mock turtle soup and wine from the neighboring pantry. I found a curious
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relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labor. As we
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worked, I turned his project over in my mind, and presently objections and
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doubts began to arise. But I worked there all the morning, So glad
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was I to find myself with a purpose again. After working an hour,
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I began to speculate on the distance one had to go before the cloaca was
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reached the chances we had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why
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we should dig this long tunnel when it was possible to get into the drain
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at once, down one of the man holes, and work back to the
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house. It seemed to me too that the house was inconveniently chosen and required
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a needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these
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things, the artilleryman stopped digging and looked at me. We're working well,
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he said. He put down his spade. Let us knock off a bit,
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He said, I think it's time we reconnoitered from the roof of the
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house. I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed
30:30
his spade. And then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped,
30:36
and so did he at once. Why were you walking about the common,
30:41
I said, instead of being here taking the air? He said,
30:45
I was coming back. It's safer by night. But the work, oh
30:52
one can't always work, he said, and in a flash I saw the
30:56
man plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. We ought to reconnoiter now,
31:04
he said, because if any come near, they may hear the spades
31:07
and drop upon us unawares. I was no longer disposed to object. We
31:14
went together to the roof and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof
31:18
door. No Martians were to be seen, and we ventured out on the
31:22
tiles and slipped down under shelter of the parapet. From this position a shrubbery
31:29
hid the greater portion of Putney, but we could see the river below a
31:33
bubbly mass of red weed, and the low parts of Lambeth flooded and red.
31:40
The red creeper swarmed up the trees about the old palace, and their
31:44
branches stretched, gaunt and dead, and set with shriveled leaves from amid its
31:49
clusters. It was strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water
31:56
for their propagation about us. Neither had gained a footing. Laburnums, pink
32:04
maize, snowballs, and trees of arborvitai rose out of laurels and high rangers,
32:09
green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond Kensington, dense smoke was rising,
32:17
and that and a blue haze hid the northward hills. The artillerymen began
32:22
to tell me of the sort of people who still remained in London. One
32:28
night last week, he said, some fools got the electric light in order,
32:31
and there was all Regent Street and the circus ablaze, crowded with painted
32:37
and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting till dawn, a
32:42
man who was there told me. And as the day came they became aware
32:46
of a fighting machine standing near by the langham and looking down at them.
32:52
Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must have given some of
32:54
them a nasty turn. He came down the road towards them and picked up
33:00
nearly a hundred, too drunk or frightened to run away. Grotesque gleam of
33:06
a time no history will ever fully describe. From that in answer to my
33:12
questions he came round to his grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He
33:20
talked so eloquently of the possibility of capturing a fighting machine that I more than
33:24
half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand something
33:30
of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing nothing precipitately,
33:37
And I noted that now there was no question that he personally was to
33:40
capture and fight the great machine. After a time we went down to the
33:45
cellar. Neither of us seemed disposed to resume digging, and when he suggested
33:52
a meal, I was nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and
33:57
when we had eaten, he went away and returned, and with some excellent
34:00
cigars we lit these, and his optimism glode. He was inclined to regard
34:07
my coming as a great occasion. There's some Champagne in the cellar, he
34:12
said, we can dig better on this Thames side. Burgundy said I no,
34:19
said he I am host to day Champagne, great god, with a
34:24
heavy enough task before us. Let us take a rest and gather strength,
34:29
while we may look at these blistered hands. And pursuant to this idea of
34:35
a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards. After we had eaten. He
34:39
taught me yuka, and after dividing London between us, I taking the north
34:45
side and he the southern, we played for parish points. Grotesque and foolish
34:51
as this will seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. And
34:55
what is more remarkable, I found the card game, and several others we
35:00
played extremely interesting strange mind of man, that, with our species upon the
35:07
edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the
35:14
chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted
35:19
pasteboard and playing the joker with vivid delight. Afterwards, he taught me poker,
35:25
and I beat him at three tough chess games. When dark came,
35:30
we decided to take the risk and lit a lamp. After an interminable string
35:37
of games, we supped, and the artilleryman finished the champagne. We went
35:42
on smoking the cigars. He was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species
35:49
I had encountered in the morning. He was still optimistic, but it was
35:52
a less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with
35:59
my health proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. I took
36:06
a cigar and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken,
36:09
that blazed so greenly along the Highgate Hills. At first I stared unintelligently
36:16
across the London Valley. The northern hills were shrouded in darkness. The fires
36:22
near Kensington glowed redly and now and then an orange red tongue of flame flashed
36:29
up and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was
36:34
black. Then nearer I perceived a strange light, a pale violet, purple
36:42
fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a space I could not
36:49
understand it, and then I knew that it must be the red weed from
36:52
which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that realization, my dormant sense of wonder,
37:00
my sense of the proportion of things awoke again. I glanced from that
37:06
to Mars, red and clear, glowing high in the west, and then
37:10
gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of Hampstead and Highgate. I remained a
37:19
very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque changes of the day.
37:24
I recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card playing.
37:30
I had a violent revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the
37:36
cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration.
37:44
I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind. I was
37:47
filled with remorse, I resolved to leave this strange, undisciplined dreamer of great
37:54
things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There,
38:00
it seemed to me I had the best chance of learning what the Martians
38:06
and my fellow men were doing. I was still upon the roof when the
38:09
late moon rose end of Section twenty four.