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04 - The Cylinder Opens - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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  Chapter four, The Cylinder opens. When I returned to the common, the
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  sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and
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  one or two persons were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased and
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  stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky. A couple of hundred
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  people perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared to
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  be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my mind. As
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  I drew nearer. I heard Sten's voice, keep back, keep back.
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  A boy came running towards me. It's a movin, he said to me,
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  as he passed a screwin and a screwin out. I don't like it.
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  I'm a goin, O, my am. I went on to the
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  crowd. There were really, I should think two or three hundred people elbowing
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  and jostling one another, the one or two ladies there being, by no
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  means the least active. He's fallen in the pit, cried someone. Keep
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  back, said several. The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my
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  way through. Everyone seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from
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  the pit. I say said Ogilvy, Help keep these idiots back. We
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  don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know. I saw a young
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  man, a shop assistant in Woking. I believe he was standing on the
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  cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole. Again. The crowd had
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  pushed him in the end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within.
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  Nearly two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I
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  narrowly missed being pitched on to the top of the screw. I turned,
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  and as I did so, the screw must have come out, for the
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  lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck
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  my elbow into the person behind me and turned my head towards the thing again.
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  For a moment, that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I have the
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  sunset in my eyes. I think everyone expected to see a man emerge,
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  possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man.
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  I know I did, But looking I presently saw something stirring within the
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  shadow, grayish billowy movements one above another, and then two luminous disks like
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  eyes. Then something resembling a little gray snake about the thickness of a walking
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  stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle and wriggled in the air towards
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  me. And then another a sudden chill came over me. There was a
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  loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed
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  upon the cylinder, still from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began
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  pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving
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  place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate
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  exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the
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  shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone,
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  and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off stent among
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  them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me.
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  I stood petrified and staring. A big, grayish, rounded bulk, the
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  size perhaps of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.
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  As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
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  Two large, dark colored eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that
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  framed them. The head of the thing was rounded and had one might say,
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  a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim
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  of which quivered and panted and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated
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  convulsively. A lank, tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another
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  swayed in the air. Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely
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  imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar, v shaped mouth with
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  its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a
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  chin beneath the wedge like lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth,
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  the gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange
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  atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy
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  of the Earth. Above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes were
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  at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something
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  fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious
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  movements, unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse,
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  I was overcome with disgust and dread. Suddenly the monster vanished. It had
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  toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit with a thud,
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  like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give
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  a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith another these creatures appeared darkly in the deep
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  shadow of the aperture. I turned, and, running madly, made for
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  the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away. But I ran
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  slantingly and stumbling, for I could not avert my face from these things.
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  There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped panting and
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  waited further developments. The common round the sand pits was dotted with people,
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  standing, like myself in a half fascinated terror, staring at these creatures,
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  or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they
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  lay. And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a round black
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  object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the
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  head of the shopman who had fallen in but showing as a little black object
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  against the hot western sun. Now he got his shoulder and knee up,
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  and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly
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  he vanished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me.
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  I had a momentary impulse to go back and help him, that my fears
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  overruled. Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the
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  heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming along
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  the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight a dwindling
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  multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle,
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  in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one
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  another, and that in short excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at
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  a few heaps of sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood a queer,
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  derelict, black against the burning sky. And in the sand pits was a
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  row of deserted vehicles, with their horses feeding out of nose bags or pouring
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  the ground. End of Section four