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1Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly
2escaped an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people stood with their backs to me. They said
3nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill, nor do I know if the
4silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely, or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the
5terror of the night. From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the Wey, and the red glare was
6hidden from me. As I ascended the little hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the trees about
7me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. Then I heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford
8Church behind me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its tree-tops and roofs black and sharp against the
9red. Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I
10felt a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green fire, suddenly
11lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left. It was the third falling star! Close on its apparition,
12and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a
13rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth and bolted. A moderate incline runs towards the foot of
14Maybury Hill, and down this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes
15as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment,
16sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The flickering
17light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as I drove down the slope. At first I
18regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly
19down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another
20showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a
21flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and
22this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright. And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous
23tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking
24engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the
25clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over
26one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred
27yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression
28those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand. Then
29suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through
30them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong
31towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether. Not
32stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head hard round to the right and in another moment the dog cart had
33heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of
34water. I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay
35motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog
36cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by
37me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford. Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate
38machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one
39of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding
40along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about.
41Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of green smoke
42squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone. So much I saw then,
43all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows. As it passed it set up
44an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder--"Aloo! Aloo!"--and in another minute it was with its companion,
45half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten
46cylinders they had fired at us from Mars. For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the
47intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was
48now beginning, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. Now and then came
49a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up. I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was
50some time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to a drier position, or think at all of my
51imminent peril. Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter's hut of wood, surrounded by a patch of potato garden.
52I struggled to my feet at last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a run for this. I
53hammered at the door, but I could not make the people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I
54desisted, and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these
55monstrous machines, into the pine woods towards Maybury. Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards
56my own house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood, for the
57lightning was now becoming infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in columns through the
58gaps in the heavy foliage. If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I should have immediately
59worked my way round through Byfleet to Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that night
60the strangeness of things about me, and my physical wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the
61skin, deafened and blinded by the storm. I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as much motive as
62I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out
63into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the
64hill in a muddy torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back. He gave a cry of
65terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the
66stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to win my way up the hill. I went close up to the
67fence on the left and worked my way along its palings.
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