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

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  Chapter five, the stillness. My first act before I went into the pantry
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  was to fasten the door between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry
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  was empty. Every scrap of food had gone. Apparently the Martian had taken
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  it all on the previous day. At that discovery, I despaired for the
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  first time. I took no food or no drink, either on the eleventh
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  or the twelfth day. At first my mouth and throat were parched, and
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  my strength ebbed. Sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery
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  in a state of despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought
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  I had become deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to
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  hear from the pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to
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  crawl noiselessly to the people, or I would have gone there. On the
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  twelfth day, my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of alarming
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  the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain water pump that stood by the sink
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  and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and tainted rain water. I was
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  greatly refreshed by this and emboldened by the fact that no inquiring tentacle followed the
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  noise of my pumping. During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way,
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  I thought much of the Curate and of the manner of his death.
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  On the thirteenth day, I drank some more water and dozed, and thought
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  disjointedly of eating and of vague, impossible plans of escape. Whenever I dozed,
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  I dreamt of horrible phanfasms, of the death of the Curate, or
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  of sumptuous dinners. But asleep or awake, I felt a keen pain that
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  urged me to drink again and again. The light that came into the scullery
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  was no longer gray, but read to my disordered imagination, it seemed the
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  color of blood. On the fourteenth day, I went into the kitchen,
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  and I was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown
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  right across the hole in the wall, turning the half light of the place
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  into a crimson colored obscurity. It was early on the fifteenth day that I
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  heard a curious, familiar sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and listening identified
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  it as the snuffing and scratching of a dog going into the kitchen, I
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  saw a dog's nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This
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  greatly surprised me. At the scent of me, he barked shortly. I
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  thought, if I could induce him to come into the place quietly, I
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  should be able perhaps to kill and eat him. And in any case,
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  it would be advisable to kill him lest his actions attracted the attention of the
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  martians. Forward, saying good dark, very softly. But he suddenly withdrew
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  his head and disappeared. I listened. I was not deaf, but certainly
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  the pit was still. I heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's
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  wings, and a hoarse croaking, but that was all for a long while.
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  I lay close to the peep hole, but not daring to move aside
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  the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a faint pitapatter,
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  like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the sand far
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  below me, And there were more bird like sounds, but that was all
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  at length. Encouraged by the silence, I looked out, except in the
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  corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over the skeletons of the
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  dead the Martians had consumed. There was not a living thing in the pit.
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  I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the mache enery
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  had gone, save for the big mound of grayish blue powder in one corner,
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  certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the skeletons
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  of the killed. The place was merely an empty circular pit in the sand.
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  Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed and stood upon the mound
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  of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me to the north,
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  and neither martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The pit
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  dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish afforded a
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  practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of escape had come.
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  I began to tremble. I hesitated for some time, and then,
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  in a gust of desperate resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently,
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  I scrambled to the top of the mound in which I had been buried so
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  long. I looked about again to the northward, too, no Martian was
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  visible when I had last seen this part of Sheen, and daylight. It
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  had been a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed with abundant,
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  shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay,
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  and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus shaped plants,
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  knee high without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute their footing. The trees near
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  me were dead and brown, but further a network of red thread scaled the
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  still living stems. The neighboring houses had all been wrecked, but none had
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  been burned. Their walls stood sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows
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  and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless rooms. Below
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  me was the great pit, with the crows struggling for its refuse. A
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  number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. Far away, I saw
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  a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men there were
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  none. The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly bright,
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  the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that
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  covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh the sweetness of the
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  air, end of Section twenty two,