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08 - Friday Night - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight. Friday Night. The most extraordinary thing to my mind,
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  Speaker 1: of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon
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  Speaker 1: that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of
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  Speaker 1: our social order, with the first beginnings of the series
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  Speaker 1: of events that was to topple that social order headlong.
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  Speaker 1: If on Friday night you had taken a pair of
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  Speaker 1: compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five
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  Speaker 1: miles round the Woking sand pits, I doubt if you
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  Speaker 1: would have had one human being outside it, unless it
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  Speaker 1: were some relation of Stent, or of the three or
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  Speaker 1: four cyclists, or London people lying dead on the common
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  Speaker 1: whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the newcomers.
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  Speaker 1: Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and
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  Speaker 1: talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did
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  Speaker 1: not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would
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  Speaker 1: have done. In London that night, Poor Henderson's telegram describing
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  Speaker 1: the graduate unscrewing of the shot was judged to be
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  Speaker 1: a Canard, and his Evening Paper, after wiring for authentication
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  Speaker 1: from him and receiving no reply the man was killed,
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  Speaker 1: decided not to print a special edition even within the
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  Speaker 1: five mile circle, the great majority of people were inert.
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  Speaker 1: I have already described the behavior of the men and
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  Speaker 1: women to whom I spoke All over the district. People
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  Speaker 1: were dining and supping. Working men were gardening after the
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  Speaker 1: labors of the day. Children were being put to bed.
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  Speaker 1: Young people were wandering through the lanes love making. Students
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  Speaker 1: sat over their books. Maybe there was a murmur in
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  Speaker 1: the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the
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  Speaker 1: public houses. And here and there a messenger or even
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  Speaker 1: an eye witness of the later occurrences caused a while
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  Speaker 1: of excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro.
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  Speaker 1: But for the most part, the daily routine of working, eating, drinking,
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  Speaker 1: sleeping went on as it had done for countless years,
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  Speaker 1: as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. Even
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  Speaker 1: at Woking Station and Horseal and Chobham. That was the
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  Speaker 1: case in Woking Junction until a late hour. Trains were
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  Speaker 1: stopping and going on. Others were shunting on the sidings,
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  Speaker 1: Passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in
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  Speaker 1: the most ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching
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  Speaker 1: on Smith's monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's news,
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  Speaker 1: the ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the
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  Speaker 1: engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of men
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  Speaker 1: from Mars. Excited men came into the station about nine
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  Speaker 1: o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than
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  Speaker 1: drunkards might have done. People rattling londonwards peered into the
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  Speaker 1: darkness outside the carriage way windows and saw only a rare, flickering,
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  Speaker 1: vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Hawseal, a
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  Speaker 1: red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving across
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  Speaker 1: the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a
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  Speaker 1: heath fire was happening. It was only round the edge
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  Speaker 1: of the Common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were
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  Speaker 1: half a dozen villas burning on the Woking border. There
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  Speaker 1: were lights in all the houses on the common side
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  Speaker 1: of the three villages, and the people there kept awake
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  Speaker 1: till dawn. A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going,
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  Speaker 1: but the crowd remaining both on the Chobham and Harsel Bridges.
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  Speaker 1: One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found went
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  Speaker 1: into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians, but
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  Speaker 1: they never returned. For now and again a light ray
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  Speaker 1: like the beam of a warship's searchlight, swept the common,
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  Speaker 1: and the heat ray was ready to follow. Save for
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  Speaker 1: such that big area of common was silent and desolate,
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  Speaker 1: and the charred bodies lay about on it all night
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  Speaker 1: under the stars, and all the next day a noise
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  Speaker 1: of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.
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  Speaker 1: So you have the state of things on Friday night.
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  Speaker 1: In the center. Sticking into the skin of our old
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  Speaker 1: planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder, but
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  Speaker 1: the poison was scarcely working. Yet around it was a
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  Speaker 1: patch of silent common, smoldering in places, and with a
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  Speaker 1: few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes. Here
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  Speaker 1: and there, here and there was a burning bush or tree.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond was a fringe of excitement. And farther than that fringe,
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  Speaker 1: the inflammation had not crept as yet in the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the world. The stream of life still flowed as
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  Speaker 1: it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war
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  Speaker 1: that that would presently clog vein and artery, dead and
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  Speaker 1: nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop. All night long,
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  Speaker 1: the martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable at work
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  Speaker 1: upon the machines they were making ready, and ever and
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  Speaker 1: again a puff of greenish white smoke whirled up to
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  Speaker 1: the Starlit sky. About eleven a company of soldiers came
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  Speaker 1: through from Hausel and deployed along the edge of the
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  Speaker 1: Common to former cordon. Later, a second company marched through
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  Speaker 1: Chobham to deploy on the north side of the Common.
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  Speaker 1: Several officers from the Inkerman Barracks had been on the
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  Speaker 1: Common earlier in the day, and one major Eden was
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  Speaker 1: reported to be missing. The colonel of the regiment came
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  Speaker 1: to the Chobham Bridge and was busy questioning the crowd.
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  Speaker 1: At midnight. The military authorities were certainly alive to the
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  Speaker 1: seriousness of the business. About eleven, the next morning's papers
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  Speaker 1: were able to say a squadron of whose ars, two
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  Speaker 1: maxims and about four hundred men of the Cardigan Regiment
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  Speaker 1: started from Aldershot. A few seconds after midnight, the crowd
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  Speaker 1: in the Chertsey Road, Woking saw a star fall from
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  Speaker 1: Heaven into the pine woods to the northeast. It had
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  Speaker 1: a greenish color and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning.
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  Speaker 1: This was the second cylinder end of section eight.