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11 - At the Window - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, at the window. I have already said that
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  Speaker 1: my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves.
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  Speaker 1: After a time I discovered that I was cold and wet,
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  Speaker 1: and with little pools of water about me on the
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  Speaker 1: stair carpet. I got up, almost mechanically, went into the
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  Speaker 1: dining room and drank some whisky, And then I was
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  Speaker 1: moved to change my clothes. After I had done that,
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  Speaker 1: I went upstairs to my study. But why I did so,
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  Speaker 1: I do not know. The window of my study looked
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  Speaker 1: over the trees and the railway towards hawseall common. In
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  Speaker 1: the hurry of our departure, this window had been left open.
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  Speaker 1: The passage was dark, and by contrast with the picture
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  Speaker 1: the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed
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  Speaker 1: impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway. The thunder
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  Speaker 1: storm had passed, The towers of the Oriental College, and
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  Speaker 1: the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away,
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  Speaker 1: lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the
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  Speaker 1: sand pits was visible across the light. Huge black shapes,
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  Speaker 1: grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro. It seemed
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  Speaker 1: indeed as if the whole country in that direction was
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  Speaker 1: on fire, a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame,
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  Speaker 1: swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm,
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  Speaker 1: and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above.
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  Speaker 1: Every now and then a haze of smoke from some
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  Speaker 1: nearer conflagragation drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes.
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  Speaker 1: I could not see what they were doing, nor the
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  Speaker 1: clear form of them, nor recognize the black objects they
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  Speaker 1: were busied upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire,
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  Speaker 1: though the reflections of it danced on the wall and
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  Speaker 1: ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of burn
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  Speaker 1: was in the air. I closed the door noiselessly and
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  Speaker 1: crept towards the window. As I did so, the view
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  Speaker 1: opened out, until on the one hand it reached to
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  Speaker 1: the houses about Woking Station, and on the other to
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  Speaker 1: the charred and blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was
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  Speaker 1: a light down below the hill on the railway near
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  Speaker 1: the arch, and several of the houses along the Maybury
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  Speaker 1: Road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins.
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  Speaker 1: The light upon the railway puzzled me at first. There
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  Speaker 1: were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to
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  Speaker 1: the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. Then
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  Speaker 1: I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part
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  Speaker 1: smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails.
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  Speaker 1: Between these three main centers of light, the houses, the train,
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  Speaker 1: and the burning county towards Chobham stretched irregular patches of
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  Speaker 1: dark country broke here and there by intervals of dimly
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  Speaker 1: glowing and smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle that
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  Speaker 1: black expanse set with fire. It reminded me more than
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  Speaker 1: anything else, of the potteries at night. At first I
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  Speaker 1: could distinguish no people at all, though I peered intently
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  Speaker 1: for them. Later I saw, against the light of Woking
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  Speaker 1: Station a number of black figures hurrying one after the
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  Speaker 1: other across the line. And this was the little world
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  Speaker 1: in which I had been living securely for years, this
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  Speaker 1: fiery chaos. What had happened in the last seven hours,
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  Speaker 1: I still did not know, Nor did I know, though
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  Speaker 1: I was beginning to guess the relation between these mechanical
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  Speaker 1: colossi and the sluggish lumps I had seen disgorged from
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  Speaker 1: the cylinder. With a queer feeling of impersonal interest. I
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  Speaker 1: turned my desk chair to the window, sat down and
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  Speaker 1: stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three
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  Speaker 1: gigantic black things that were going to and fro in
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  Speaker 1: the glare about the sand pits. They seemed amazingly busy.
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  Speaker 1: I began to ask myself what they could be, why
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  Speaker 1: they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing, I felt was impossible.
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  Speaker 1: Or did a martian sit within each ruling directing using
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  Speaker 1: much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body.
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  Speaker 1: I began to compare the things to human machines, to
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  Speaker 1: ask myself, for the first time in my life, how
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  Speaker 1: an iron clad or a steam engine would seem to
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  Speaker 1: an intelligent lower animal. The storm had left the sky clear,
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  Speaker 1: and over the smoke of the burning land, the little
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  Speaker 1: fading pin point of Mars was dropping into the west.
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  Speaker 1: When a soldier came into my garden. I heard a
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  Speaker 1: slight scraping at the fence and rousing myself from the
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  Speaker 1: left that had fallen upon me. I looked down and
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  Speaker 1: saw him dimly clambering over the palings. At the sight
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  Speaker 1: of another human being, my torpa passed, and I leaned
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  Speaker 1: out of the window eagerly hissed, said I in a whisper.
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  Speaker 1: He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he
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  Speaker 1: came over and across the lawn to the corner of
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  Speaker 1: the house. He bent down and stepped softly. Who's there,
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  Speaker 1: he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up.
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  Speaker 1: Where are you going? I asked, God knows are you
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  Speaker 1: trying to hide? That's it? Come into the house, I said.
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  Speaker 1: I went down, unfastened the door and let him in,
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  Speaker 1: and locked the door again. I could not see his face.
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  Speaker 1: He was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned. My god,
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  Speaker 1: he said, as I drew him in. What has happened?
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  Speaker 1: And I asked, what hasn't? In the obscurity I could
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  Speaker 1: see he made a gesture of despair. They wiped us out,
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  Speaker 1: simply wiped us out, he repeated, again and again. He
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  Speaker 1: followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room. Take some whiskey,
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  Speaker 1: I said, pouring out a stiff dose. He drank it.
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  Speaker 1: Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his
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  Speaker 1: head on his arms, and began to sob and weep
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  Speaker 1: like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion.
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  Speaker 1: While I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair.
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  Speaker 1: Stood beside him, wondering. It was a long time before
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  Speaker 1: he could steady his nerves to answer my questions. And
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  Speaker 1: then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. He was a driver
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  Speaker 1: in the artillery and had only come into action about
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  Speaker 1: seven At that time, firing was going on the common,
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  Speaker 1: and it was said the first party of Martians were
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  Speaker 1: crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a
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  Speaker 1: metal shield. Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs
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  Speaker 1: and became the first of the fighting machines. I had
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  Speaker 1: seen the gun he drove had been unlimbered near Horsel
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  Speaker 1: in order to command the sand pits, and its arrival
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  Speaker 1: it was that had precipitated the action. As the limber
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  Speaker 1: gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a
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  Speaker 1: rabbit hole and came down, throwing him into a depression
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  Speaker 1: of the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded
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  Speaker 1: behind him. The ammunition blew up. There was fire all
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  Speaker 1: about him, and he found himself lying under a heap
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  Speaker 1: of charred dead men and dead horses. I lay still,
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  Speaker 1: he said, scared out of my wits, with the fore
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  Speaker 1: quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out,
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  Speaker 1: and the smell good, god like burnt meat. I was
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  Speaker 1: hurt across the back by the fall of the horse,
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  Speaker 1: and there I had to lie until I felt better,
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  Speaker 1: just like parade. It had been a minute before then
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  Speaker 1: stumble bang, swish wiped out. He said he had hid
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  Speaker 1: under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out
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  Speaker 1: furtively across the common. The Cardigan men had tried a
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  Speaker 1: rush in skirmishing order at the pit, simply to be
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  Speaker 1: swept out of existence. Then the monster had risen to
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  Speaker 1: its feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and
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  Speaker 1: fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its
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  Speaker 1: headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a
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  Speaker 1: cowled human being. A kind of arm carried a complicated
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  Speaker 1: metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated, and out of
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  Speaker 1: the funnel of this there smoked the heat ray. In
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  Speaker 1: a few minutes, there was, so far as the soldier
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  Speaker 1: could see, not a living thing left upon the common,
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  Speaker 1: and every bush and tree upon it that was not
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  Speaker 1: already a blackened skeleton was burning. The Huzzahs had been
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  Speaker 1: on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and
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  Speaker 1: he saw nothing of them. He heard the maxims rattle
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  Speaker 1: for a time and then become still. The giant saved
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  Speaker 1: Woking Station and its cluster of houses until the last. Then,
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  Speaker 1: in a moment, the heat ray was brought to bear,
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  Speaker 1: and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then
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  Speaker 1: the thing shut off the heat ray, and turning its
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  Speaker 1: back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards the
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  Speaker 1: smoldering pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it
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  Speaker 1: did so, a second glittering titan built itself up out
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  Speaker 1: of the pit. The second monster followed the first, and
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  Speaker 1: at that the artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across
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  Speaker 1: the hot heather ash towards Hawsel. He managed to get
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  Speaker 1: alive into the ditch by the side of the road,
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  Speaker 1: and so escaped Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The
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  Speaker 1: place was impassable, it seems, though, where a few people
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  Speaker 1: alive there frantic for the most part, and many burned
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  Speaker 1: and scalded. He was turned aside by the fire and
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  Speaker 1: hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall. As
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  Speaker 1: one of the Martian giants returned he saw this one
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  Speaker 1: pursue a man catch him up in one of its
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  Speaker 1: steely tentacles and knock his head against the trunk of
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  Speaker 1: a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made
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  Speaker 1: a rush for it and got over the railway embankment.
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  Speaker 1: Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury in
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  Speaker 1: the hope of getting out of danger. London Wood people
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  Speaker 1: were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the
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  Speaker 1: survivors had made off towards Woking village and Send. He
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  Speaker 1: had been consumed with thirst until he found one of
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  Speaker 1: the water mains near the railway arch smashed and the
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  Speaker 1: water bubbling out like a spring upon the road. That
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  Speaker 1: was the story I got from him. Bit by bit
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  Speaker 1: he grew calmer, telling me and trying to make me
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  Speaker 1: see the things he had seen. He had eaten no
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  Speaker 1: food since midday, he told me early in his narrative.
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  Speaker 1: And I found some mutton and bread in the pantry
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  Speaker 1: and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp
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  Speaker 1: for fear of attracting the martians, and ever and again
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  Speaker 1: our hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked.
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  Speaker 1: Things about us came darkly out of the darkness, and
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  Speaker 1: the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window
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  Speaker 1: grew distinct. It would seem that a number of men
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  Speaker 1: or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to
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  Speaker 1: see his face blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine
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  Speaker 1: was also. When we had finished eating, we went softly
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  Speaker 1: upstairs to my study, and I looked again out of
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  Speaker 1: the open window. One night, the valley had become a
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  Speaker 1: valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled. Now where flames
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  Speaker 1: had been, there were now streamers of smoke. But the
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  Speaker 1: countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and
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  Speaker 1: blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now,
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  Speaker 1: gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn. Yet
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  Speaker 1: here and there some object had had the luck to escape.
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  Speaker 1: A white railway signal, here the end of a greenhouse, there,
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  Speaker 1: white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the
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  Speaker 1: history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate, and so universal,
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  Speaker 1: and shining with the growing light of the east. Three
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  Speaker 1: of the metallic giants stood about the pit, their cowls
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  Speaker 1: rotating as though they were surveying the desolation. They had made.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged,
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  Speaker 1: and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapor streamed
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  Speaker 1: up and out of it towards the brightening dawn, streamed up, whirled, broke,
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  Speaker 1: and vanished. Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chopham.
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  Speaker 1: They became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch
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  Speaker 1: of day. End of Section eleven