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07 - How I Reached Home - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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  Chapter seven, How I reached home. For my own part, I remembered
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  nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling through the
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  heather. All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians. That pitiless
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  sword of heat seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead, before it descended
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  and smote me out of life. I came into the road between the cross
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  roads and Hawsel, and ran along this to the cross roads. At last
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  I could go no further. I was exhausted with the violence of my emotion
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  and of my flight, and I staggered and fell by the wayside that was
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  near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gas works. I fell and
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  lay still. I must have remained there some time. I sat up,
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  strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps I could not clearly understand how I
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  came there. My terror had fallen from me like a garment. My hat
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  had gone, and my collar had burst away from its fastener. A few
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  minutes before, there had only been three real things before me, the immensity
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  of the night and space and nature, my own feebleness and anguish, and
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  the near approach of death. Now it was as if something turned over and
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  the point of view altered abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state
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  of mind to the other. I was immediately the self of every day again,
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  a decent, ordinary citizen, the silent common. The impulse of my
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  flight, the starting flames were as if they had been in a dream.
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  I asked myself, had these latter things indeed happened? I could not credit
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  it. I rose and wore unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge.
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  My mind was blank. Wonder My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their strength,
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  I dare say. I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch,
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  and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran
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  a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was
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  minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with
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  a meaningless mumble, and went on over the bridge. Over the Maybury Arch,
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  a train, a billowing tumult of white violet smoke, and a long
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  caterpillar of lighted windows went flying south, clatter clatter, clap rap, And
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  it had gone A dim group of people talked in the gate of one of
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  the houses in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace.
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  It was all so real and so familiar, and that behind me it was
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  frantic, fantastic. Such things, I told myself could not be. Perhaps
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  I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my
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  experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from
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  myself and the world about me. I seemed to watch it all from the
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  outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space,
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  out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very strong
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  upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream. But the
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  trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder.
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  Not two miles away. There was a noise of business from the gas works,
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  and the electric lamps were all alight. I stopped at the group of
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  people. What news from the common, said I. There were two men
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  and a woman at the gate, Eh, said one of the men,
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  turning, What news from the common? I said, ain't you just been
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  there? Asked the men. People seem fair silly about the common, said
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  the woman over the gate. What's it all about? Haven't you heard of
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  the men from Mars? Said I, the creatures from Mars. Quite enough,
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  said the woman over the gate. Thanks, and all of them laughed.
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  I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell
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  them what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences. You'll
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  hear more yet, I said, and went on to my home. I
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  startled my wife at the doorway. So haggard was I. I went into
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  the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as
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  I could collect myself sufficiently, I told her the thing I had seen.
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  The dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served and remained
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  neglected on the table while I told my story. There is one thing I
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  said to allay the fears I had aroused. They are the most sluggish things
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  I ever saw crawl. They may keep the pit and kill people who come
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  near them, but they cannot get out of it. But the horror of
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  them, don't dear, said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her
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  hand on mine. Poor Ogilvy, I said, to think he may be
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  lying dead, there. My wife at least did not find my experience incredible.
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  When I saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.
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  They may come here, she said, again, and again. I pressed
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  her to take wine, and tried to reassure her. They can scarcely move,
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  I said. I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that
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  Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the Earth.
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  In particular, I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty on the surface of
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  the Earth. The force of gravity is three times what it is on the
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  surface of Mars. A martian therefore would weigh three times more than on Mars,
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  albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His own body would be
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  a cope of lead to him. That indeed was the general opinion. Both
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  the Times and the Daily Telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next
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  morning, and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.
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  The atmosphere of the Earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen
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  or far less argonne, whichever way one likes to put it, than Mars.
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  The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians, indisputably did
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  much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. And in the second place,
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  we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was
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  quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch. But I did not
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  consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was dead against the
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  chances of the invaders. With wine and food, the confidence of my own
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  table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees,
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  courageous and secure. They have done a foolish thing, said I,
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  fingering my wine glass. They are dangerous because, no doubt they are mad
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  with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living things, certainly no intelligent
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  living things. A shell in the pit, said I. If the worst
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  comes to the worst, we'll kill them all. The intense excitement of the
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  events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erithism. I
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  remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now, my dear wife's sweet,
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  anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth
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  with its silver and glass table furniture, for in those days even philosophical writers
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  had many little luxuries. The crimson purple wine in my glass a photographically distinct.
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  At the end of it, I sat tempering nuts with a cigarette,
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  regretting Ogilvy's rashness and denouncing the short sighted timidity of the Martians. So some
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  respectable Dodo in the Mauritius might have lauded it in his nest and discussed the
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  arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. We will
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  peck them to death to morrow, my dear, I did not know it,
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  but that was the last civilized dinner I was to eat for many very
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  strange and terrible days. End of Section seven.