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1"What news from the common?" said I. There were two men and a woman at the gate. "Eh?" said one of the men, turning.
2"What news from the common?" I said. "Ain't yer just been there?" asked the men. "People seem fair silly about the
3common," said the woman over the gate. "What's it all abart?" "Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the
4creatures from Mars?" "Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks;" and all three of them laughed. I felt
5foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences.
6"You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home. I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into
7the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I
8had seen. The dinner, which was a cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the table while I told my
9story. "There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had aroused; "they are the most sluggish things I ever saw
10crawl. They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. . . . But the horror of
11them!" "Don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her hand on mine. "Poor Ogilvy!" I said. "To think he
12may be lying dead there!" My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw how deadly white her face
13was, I ceased abruptly. "They may come here," she said again and again. I pressed her to take wine, and tried to
14reassure her. "They can scarcely move," I said. I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told
15me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the
16gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of
17Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same.
18His own body would be a cope of lead to him, therefore. That, indeed, was the general opinion. Both The Times and the
19Daily Telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious
20modifying influences. The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen or far less argon (whichever
21way one likes to put it) than does Mars'. The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians
22indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. And, in the second place, we all
23overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular
24exertion at a pinch. But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was dead against the chances
25of the invaders. With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by
26insensible degrees courageous and secure. "They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my wineglass. "They are
27dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living things--certainly no
28intelligent living things." "A shell in the pit," said I, "if the worst comes to the worst, will kill them all." The
29intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner
30table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp
31shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days even philosophical writers had many
32little luxuries--the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering
33nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the short-sighted timidity of the Martians. So some
34respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of
35pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear." I did not know it, but that was
36the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days. VIII. FRIDAY NIGHT. The most
37extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the
38dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to
39topple that social order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius
40of five miles round the Woking sand-pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some
41relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits
42were at all affected by the new-comers. Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their
43leisure, but it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done. In London that night
44poor Henderson's telegram describing the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening
45paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no reply--the man was killed--decided not to print a
46special edition. Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were inert. I have already described the
47behaviour of the men and women to whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping; working men were
48gardening after the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes
49love-making, students sat over their books. Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic
50in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of
51excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking,
52sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years--as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. Even at Woking
53station and Horsell and Chobham that was the case. In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going
54on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the
55most ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching on Smith's monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's news. The
56ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of "Men from
57Mars!" Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than
58drunkards might have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw
59only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke
60driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the
61edge of the common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas burning on the Woking border.
62There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake till dawn.
63A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell
64bridges. One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the
65Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight swept the
66common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the
67charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise of hammering from the pit was
68heard by many people.
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