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1The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over the
2country--leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd--the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to
3return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the
4vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened
5skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers
6of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and
7began thanking God. In a year, thought I--in a year. . . . With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my
8wife, and the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever. IX. WRECKAGE. And now comes the
9strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all
10that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I
11forget. Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so far from my being the first discoverer of
12the Martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night. One man--the
13first--had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand, and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to telegraph to
14Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions,
15suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, at the time
16when I stood upon the verge of the pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and staying their work
17to shake hands and shout, were making up trains, even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that
18had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced,
19unkempt, scorched along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of
20despair. And for the food! Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were
21tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no
22memory. I drifted--a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day
23wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood. They have told me since that I was singing some
24insane doggerel about "The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!" Troubled as they were with their own
25affairs, these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude to them, I may not even give here,
26nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they had learned
27something of my story from me during the days of my lapse. Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break
28to me what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with
29every soul in it, by a Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might
30crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness of power. I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely
31man and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four days after my recovery. All that time I felt a
32vague, a growing craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so happy and bright in my
33past. It was a mere hopeless desire to feast upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me
34from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and
35parting, as I will confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I went out again into the streets that had lately
36been so dark and strange and empty. Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were shops open,
37and I saw a drinking fountain running water. I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my
38melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many
39people were abroad everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible that any great proportion of
40the population could have been slain. But then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how shaggy the
41hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed
42all with one of two expressions--a leaping exultation and energy or a grim resolution. Save for the expression of the
43faces, London seemed a city of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent us by the French
44government. The ribs of the few horses showed dismally. Haggard special constables with white badges stood at the
45corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and
46there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge. At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one
47of the common contrasts of that grotesque time--a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the red weed, transfixed
48by a stick that kept it in place. It was the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication--the Daily Mail. I
49bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. Most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who
50did the thing had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on the back page. The matter he
51printed was emotional; the news organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing fresh except that
52already in one week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the
53article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the "Secret of Flying," was discovered. At Waterloo I found
54the free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over. There were few people in the
55train, and I was in no mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms, looking
56greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over
57temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. To Clapham Junction the face of
58London was grimy with powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham Junction
59the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the
60customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying. All down the line from there the aspect of the country was
61gaunt and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue of its unburned pine woods, seemed the
62least hurt of any place along the line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of red weed, in
63appearance between butcher's meat and pickled cabbage. The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of
64the red climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth
65about the sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over
66it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with
67the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went with
68infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward
69hills.
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