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

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