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25 - Dead London - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight, Dead London. After I had parted from the artilleryman,
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  Speaker 1: I went down the hill and by the high street,
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  Speaker 1: across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was tumultuous
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  Speaker 1: at that time and nearly choked the bridge roadway, but
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  Speaker 1: its fronds were already whitening in patches by the spreading
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  Speaker 1: disease that presently removed it so swiftly. At the corner
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  Speaker 1: of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station, I
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  Speaker 1: found a man lying. He was as black as a
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  Speaker 1: sweep with the black dust. Alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk.
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  Speaker 1: I could get nothing from him but curses and furious
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  Speaker 1: lunges at my head. I think I should have stayed
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  Speaker 1: by him, but for the brutal expression of his face.
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  Speaker 1: There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards,
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  Speaker 1: and it grew thicker. In Fulham, the streets were horribly quiet.
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  Speaker 1: I got food sour, hard and moldy, but quite eatable
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  Speaker 1: in a baker's shop. Here some way towards Wallam Green,
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  Speaker 1: the streets became clear of powder, and I passed a
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  Speaker 1: white terrace of houses on fire. The noise of the
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  Speaker 1: burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the
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  Speaker 1: streets were quiet again. Here I came once more upon
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  Speaker 1: the black powder in the streets, and upon dead bodies.
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  Speaker 1: I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of
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  Speaker 1: the Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so
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  Speaker 1: that I hurried quickly past them. The black powder covered
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  Speaker 1: them over and softened their outlines. One or two had
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  Speaker 1: been disturbed by dogs. Where there was no black powder.
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  Speaker 1: It was curiously like a Sunday in the city, with
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  Speaker 1: the closed shops, the houses locked up, and the blinds drawn,
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  Speaker 1: the desertion and the stillness. In some places plunderers had
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  Speaker 1: been at work, but rarely at other than the provision
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  Speaker 1: and wine shops. A jeweler's window had been broken open
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  Speaker 1: in one place, but apparently the thief had been disturbed,
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  Speaker 1: and a number of gold chains and a watch lay
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  Speaker 1: scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch them.
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  Speaker 1: Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on
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  Speaker 1: a doorstep. The hand that hung over her knee was
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  Speaker 1: gashed and bled down. Her rusty brown dress and a
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  Speaker 1: smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement.
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  Speaker 1: She seemed asleep, but she was dead. The father I
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  Speaker 1: penetrated into London, the profounder grew the stillness. But it
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  Speaker 1: was not so much the stillness of death. It was
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  Speaker 1: the stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time, the
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  Speaker 1: destruction that had already singed the northwestern borders of the
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  Speaker 1: metropolis and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn might strike among
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  Speaker 1: these houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a
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  Speaker 1: city condemned and derelict. In South Kensington, the streets were
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  Speaker 1: clear of dead and of black powder. It was near
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  Speaker 1: South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept
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  Speaker 1: almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation
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  Speaker 1: of two notes, Ulla, Ulla, Ulla, Ulla, keeping on perpetually.
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  Speaker 1: When I passed streets that ran northward, it grew in volume,
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  Speaker 1: and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it
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  Speaker 1: off again. It came in a full tide down exhibition road.
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  Speaker 1: I stopped staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange,
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  Speaker 1: remote wailing. It was as if that mighty desert of
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  Speaker 1: houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude.
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  Speaker 1: Oola Oo la oo la oola wailed that superhuman note
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  Speaker 1: great waves of sound, sweeping down the broad sunlit roadway
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  Speaker 1: between the tall buildings on each side. I turned northwards,
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  Speaker 1: marveling towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. I had
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  Speaker 1: half a mind to break into the Natural History Museum
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  Speaker 1: and find my way up to the summits of the
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  Speaker 1: towers in order to see across the park. But I
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  Speaker 1: decided to keep to the ground where quick hiding was possible,
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  Speaker 1: and so went on up the exhibition road. All the
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  Speaker 1: large mansions on each side of the road were empty
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  Speaker 1: and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of
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  Speaker 1: the houses. At the top, near the park gate, I
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  Speaker 1: came upon a strange site, thus overturned, and the skeleton
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  Speaker 1: of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for
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  Speaker 1: a time, and then went on to the bridge over
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  Speaker 1: the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I
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  Speaker 1: could see nothing above the housetops on the north side
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  Speaker 1: of the park save a haze of smoke to the northwest.
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  Speaker 1: Oolah Oollah oollah oollah, cried the voice, coming, as it
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  Speaker 1: seemed to me, from the district about Regent's Park. The
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  Speaker 1: desolating cry worked upon my mind the mood that had
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  Speaker 1: sustained me passed, the wailing took possession of me. I
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  Speaker 1: found I was intensely weary, footsore, and now again hungry
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  Speaker 1: and thirsty. It was already past noon. Why was I
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  Speaker 1: wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was
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  Speaker 1: I alone? When all London was lying in state and
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  Speaker 1: in its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind
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  Speaker 1: ran on old friends that I had forgotten for years.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I thought of the poisons in the chemist's shops, of
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  Speaker 1: the liquors the wine merchants stored. I recalled the two
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  Speaker 1: sodden creatures of despair, who, so far as I knew,
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  Speaker 1: shared the city with myself. I came into Oxford Street
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  Speaker 1: by the Marble Arch, and here again were black powder
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  Speaker 1: and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the
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  Speaker 1: gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. I
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  Speaker 1: grew very thirsty after the heat of my long walk
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  Speaker 1: with infinite trouble. I managed to break into a public
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  Speaker 1: house and get food and drink. I was weary after eating,
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  Speaker 1: and went into the parlor behind the bar and slept
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  Speaker 1: on a black horse hair sofa I found there. I
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  Speaker 1: awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears,
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  Speaker 1: oola oo la oo la oo la. It was now dusk,
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  Speaker 1: and after I had routed out some biscuits and the
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  Speaker 1: cheese in the bar, there was a meat safe, but
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  Speaker 1: it contained nothing but Maggot's. I wandered on through the
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  Speaker 1: silent residential squares to Baker Street. Portman Square is the
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  Speaker 1: only one I can name, and so came out at
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  Speaker 1: last upon Regent's Park. And as I emerged from the
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  Speaker 1: top of Baker Street, I saw, far away over the trees,
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  Speaker 1: in the clearness of the sunset, the hood of the
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  Speaker 1: Martian giant from which this howling proceeded. I was not terrified.
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  Speaker 1: I came upon him as if it were a matter
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  Speaker 1: of course. I watched him for some time, but he
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  Speaker 1: did not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling
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  Speaker 1: for no reason that I could discover. I tried to
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  Speaker 1: formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of oo
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  Speaker 1: la oo la oo la oo la confused my mind.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps I was too tired to be very fearful. Certainly
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  Speaker 1: I was more curious to know the reason of this
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  Speaker 1: monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the
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  Speaker 1: park and struck into park Road, intending to skirt the park,
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  Speaker 1: went along under the shelter of the terraces and got
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  Speaker 1: a view of this stationary howling martian. From the direction
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  Speaker 1: of Saint John's Wood, a couple of hundred yards out
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  Speaker 1: of Baker Street, I heard a yelping chorus, and saw
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  Speaker 1: first a dog with a piece of putresse and red
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  Speaker 1: meat in his jaws, coming headlong towards me, and then
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  Speaker 1: a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. He
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  Speaker 1: made a wife curved to avoid me, as though he
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  Speaker 1: feared I might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping
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  Speaker 1: died away down the silent road, the wailing sound of
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  Speaker 1: oolah oulla oulla ulla reasserted itself. I came upon the
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  Speaker 1: wrecked handling machine half way to Saint John's Woods station.
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  Speaker 1: At first I thought a house had fallen across the road.
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  Speaker 1: It was only as I clambered among the ruins that
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  Speaker 1: I saw with a start, this mechanical sampson, lying with
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  Speaker 1: its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted among the ruins
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  Speaker 1: it had made. The forepart was shattered. It seemed as
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  Speaker 1: if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and
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  Speaker 1: had been overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: then that this might have happened by a handling machine
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  Speaker 1: escaping from the guidance of its martian. I could not
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  Speaker 1: clamber among the ruins to see it, and the twilight
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  Speaker 1: was now so far advanced that the blood with which
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  Speaker 1: its seat was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the
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  Speaker 1: martian that the dogs had left were invisible to me.
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  Speaker 1: Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I
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  Speaker 1: pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap
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  Speaker 1: in the trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless
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  Speaker 1: as the first, standing in the park, towards the zoological gardens,
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  Speaker 1: and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the smashed
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  Speaker 1: handling machine. I came upon the red weed again, and
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: found the Regent's Canal a spongy mass of dark red vegetation.
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  Speaker 1: As I crossed the bridge, the sound of oo la
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  Speaker 1: oo la oo la oo la ceased. It was as
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  Speaker 1: it were cut off. The silence came like a thunderclap.
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  Speaker 1: The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim.
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  Speaker 1: The trees towards the park were growing black. All about me.
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  Speaker 1: The red weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get
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  Speaker 1: above me. In the dimness night, The mother of fear
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  Speaker 1: and mystery was coming upon me. But while that voice sounded,
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  Speaker 1: the solitude, the desolation had been endurable by virtue of it.
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  Speaker 1: London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life
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  Speaker 1: about me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the
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  Speaker 1: passing of something I knew not what, and then a
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  Speaker 1: stillness that could be felt. Nothing but this gaunt quiet
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  Speaker 1: London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in
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  Speaker 1: the white houses were like the eye sockets of skulls.
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  Speaker 1: About me, My imagination found a thousand noiseless enemies moving
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: terror seized me, a horror of my temerity. In front
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  Speaker 1: of me. The road became pitchy, black, as though it
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  Speaker 1: was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across
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  Speaker 1: the pathway. I could not bring myself to go on.
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  Speaker 1: I turned down Saint John's Wood Road and ran aheadlong
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  Speaker 1: from this unendurable stillness, towards Kilburn. I hid from the
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  Speaker 1: night and the silence until long after midnight in a
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  Speaker 1: cabman's shelter and harrow road. But before the dawn, my
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  Speaker 1: courage returned, and while the stars were still in the sky,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I turned once more towards Regent's Park. I missed my
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: way among the streets, and presently saw down a long
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  Speaker 1: avenue in the half light of the early dawn, the
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  Speaker 1: curve of Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up to
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  Speaker 1: the fading stars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless
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  Speaker 1: like the others. An insane resolve possessed me. I would
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  Speaker 1: die and end it, and I would save myself, even
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  Speaker 1: the trouble of killing myself. I marched on recklessly towards
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  Speaker 1: this titan, and then as I drew nearer and the
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  Speaker 1: light grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds
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  Speaker 1: was circling and clustering about the hood. At that my
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  Speaker 1: heart gave a bound, and I began running along the road.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I hurried through the red weed that choked Saint Edmund's Terrace.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I waded breast high across a torrent of water that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: was rushing down from the water works towards the Albert Road,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and emerged upon the grass. Before the rising of the sun,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the hill,
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  Speaker 1: making a huge redoubt of it. It was the final
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and largest place the Martians had made. And from behind
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  Speaker 1: these heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Against the skyline, an eager dog ran and disappeared. The
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  Speaker 1: thought that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible.
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  Speaker 1: I felt no fear, only a wild trembling exultation as
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  Speaker 1: I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out
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  Speaker 1: of the hood hung lank shreds of brown at which
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  Speaker 1: the hungry birds pecked and tore. In another moment, I
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  Speaker 1: had scrambled up the earth and rampart and stood upon
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  Speaker 1: its crest. And the interior of the redoubt was below me.
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  Speaker 1: A mighty space. It was, with gigantic machines here and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: there within it, huge mounds of material, and strange shelter places,
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  Speaker 1: and scattered about it, some in their overturned war machines,
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  Speaker 1: some in the now rigid handling machines, and a dozen
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  Speaker 1: of them stark and silent and laid in a row
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  Speaker 1: with the Martians dead, slain by the putrefactive and disease
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  Speaker 1: bacteria against which their systems were unprepared, slain as the
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  Speaker 1: red weed was being slain slain, after all man's devices
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  Speaker 1: had failed by the humblest things that God in his
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  Speaker 1: wisdom has put upon this earth. For so it had
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen,
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  Speaker 1: had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs
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  Speaker 1: of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of things, taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life
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  Speaker 1: began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of
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  Speaker 1: our kind, we have developed resisting power. To no germs
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: do we succumb without a struggle, and to many those
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that cause putrefaction in dead matter. For instance, our living
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: frames are altogether immune, but there are no bacteria in Mars.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And directly these invaders arrived. Directly, they drank and fed
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  Speaker 1: our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when
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  Speaker 1: I watched them, they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: even as they went to and fro It was inevitable
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: by the toll of a billion deaths. Man has bought
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  Speaker 1: his birthright of the earth, and it is his against
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  Speaker 1: all comers. It would still be his were the Martians
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  Speaker 1: ten times as mighty as they are, for neither do
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  Speaker 1: men live nor die in vain. Here and there they
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: were scattered, nearly fifty altogether in that great gulf. They
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  Speaker 1: had made overtaken by a death that must have seemed
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me. Also,
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  Speaker 1: at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: was that these things that had been alive and so
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: terrible to men were dead. For a moment, I believed
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  Speaker 1: that the destruction of Snacharib had been repeated, that God
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  Speaker 1: had repented, that the angel of Death had slain them.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: In the night, I stood staring into the pit, and
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: my heart lightened gloriously. Even as the rising sun struck
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the world to fire about me with his rays, the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: pit was still in darkness. The mighty machines, so great
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in
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  Speaker 1: their tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: of the shadows towards the light. A multitude of dogs
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  Speaker 1: I could hear fought over the bodies that lay darkly
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the pit, on its farther lip, flat and vast and
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: strange lay the great flying machine with which they had
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death
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  Speaker 1: arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: At the sound of a quarring overhead, I looked up
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: at the huge fighting machine that would fight no more forever,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: at the tattered, red shreds of flesh that dripped down
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose Hill.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I turned and looked down the slope of the hill,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to where, in haload now in birds, stood those other
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  Speaker 1: two martians that I had seen overnight, just as death
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: had been overtaken them. The one had died even as
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  Speaker 1: it had been crying to its companions. Perhaps it was
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  Speaker 1: the last to die, and its voice had gone on
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted. They
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: glittered now harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: brightness of the rising sun all about the pit, and saved,
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  Speaker 1: as by a miracle, from everlasting destruction, stretched the great
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  Speaker 1: Mother of cities. Those who have only seen London veiled
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: in her somber robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses. Eastward,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: splintered spire of the Church, the sun blazed dazzling in
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: a clear sky. And here and there some facet in
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and glared
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  Speaker 1: with a white intensity. Northward were Kilburn and Hampstead, blue
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  Speaker 1: and crowded with houses. Westward, the great city was dimmed,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park,
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  Speaker 1: the Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the
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  Speaker 1: Imperial Institute, and the giant mansions of the Brompton Road
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: came out clear and little in the sunrise, the jagged
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and blue
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: were the Surrey Hills, and the towers of the Crystal
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Palace glittered like two silver rods. The Dome of Saint
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Paul's was dark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: for the first time by a huge gaping cavity on
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: its western side. And as I looked at this wide
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: expanse of houses and factories, and churches, silent and abandoned.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: As I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: human reef, and of all the swift and ruthless destruction
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: that had hung over it all. When I realized that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: still live in the streets, and this dear, vast, dead
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: city of mine be once again alive and powerful, I
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: felt a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: The torment was over. Even that day. The healing would begin.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: The survivors of the people scattered over the country, leaderless, lawless, foodless,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: like sheep without a shepherd. The thousands who had fled
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: by sea would begin to return. The pulse of life,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: streets and par across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the blackened skeletons of houses, of houses that stared so
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill would presently
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: be echoing with the hammers of the restorers, and ringing
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought, I
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: In a year, thought I in a year. With overwhelming force,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased forever.
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  Speaker 1: End of Section twenty five.