📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 70
1In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory,
2the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the
3telescope, the little slit in the roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about,
4invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming
5in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and
6slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm--a pin's head of light! It was as if it
7quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.
8As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye
9was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the
10immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims. Near it in the field, I remember, were three
11faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of
12empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And
13invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible
14distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that
15was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on
16earth dreamed of that unerring missile. That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I
17saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight;
18and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs
19clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the
20streamer of gas that came out towards us. That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from
21Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the
22blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little
23suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one,
24and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and
25Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace. He was full of speculation that night about the condition
26of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites
27might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to
28me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. "The chances
29against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one," he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the
30night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased
31after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians
32inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating
33patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. Even the daily
34papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the
35volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And,
36all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a
37second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost
38incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I
39remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in
40those days. People in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers.
41For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the
42probable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed. One night (the first missile then could scarcely have
43been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to
44her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It
45was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music.
46There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance
47came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed
48out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed
49so safe and tranquil. II. THE FALLING STAR. Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the
50morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken
51it for an ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds.
52Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one
53hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him. I was at home at that hour
54and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in
55those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth
56from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of
57those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people in
58Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had
59descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night. But very early in the morning poor
60Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between
61Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far
62from the sand-pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been
63flung violently in every direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire
64eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn. The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the
65scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of
66a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of
67about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are
68rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near
69approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it
70had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.
🎉 全部完成！共 70 行