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1By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous tragedy in which he had been involved--it was evident
2he was a fugitive from Weybridge--had driven him to the very verge of his reason. "Are we far from Sunbury?" I said, in
3a matter-of-fact tone. "What are we to do?" he asked. "Are these creatures everywhere? Has the earth been given over to
4them?" "Are we far from Sunbury?" "Only this morning I officiated at early celebration----" "Things have changed," I
5said, quietly. "You must keep your head. There is still hope." "Hope!" "Yes. Plentiful hope--for all this destruction!"
6I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first, but as I went on the interest dawning in his eyes gave
7place to their former stare, and his regard wandered from me. "This must be the beginning of the end," he said,
8interrupting me. "The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord! When men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks
9to fall upon them and hide them--hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!" I began to understand the
10position. I ceased my laboured reasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over him, laid my hand on his shoulder.
11"Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of
12what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He
13is not an insurance agent." For a time he sat in blank silence. "But how can we escape?" he asked, suddenly. "They are
14invulnerable, they are pitiless." "Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other," I answered. "And the mightier they are the
15more sane and wary should we be. One of them was killed yonder not three hours ago." "Killed!" he said, staring about
16him. "How can God's ministers be killed?" "I saw it happen." I proceeded to tell him. "We have chanced to come in for
17the thick of it," said I, "and that is all." "What is that flicker in the sky?" he asked abruptly. I told him it was the
18heliograph signalling--that it was the sign of human help and effort in the sky. "We are in the midst of it," I said,
19"quiet as it is. That flicker in the sky tells of the gathering storm. Yonder, I take it are the Martians, and
20Londonward, where those hills rise about Richmond and Kingston and the trees give cover, earthworks are being thrown up
21and guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be coming this way again." And even as I spoke he sprang to his
22feet and stopped me by a gesture. "Listen!" he said. From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance
23of distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then everything was still. A cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past
24us. High in the west the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot,
25still splendour of the sunset. "We had better follow this path," I said, "northward." XIV. IN LONDON. My younger brother
26was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. He was a medical student working for an imminent examination, and he
27heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers on Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy
28special articles on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so forth, a brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the
29more striking for its brevity. The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number of people with a
30quick-firing gun, so the story ran. The telegram concluded with the words: "Formidable as they seem to be, the Martians
31have not moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, indeed, seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due
32to the relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." On that last text their leader-writer expanded very
33comfortingly. Of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which my brother went that day, were
34intensely interested, but there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers puffed
35scraps of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell beyond the movements of troops about the common, and the
36burning of the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight. Then the St. James's Gazette, in an extra-special
37edition, announced the bare fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication. This was thought to be due to the
38falling of burning pine trees across the line. Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of my drive
39to Leatherhead and back. My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the description in the papers that the
40cylinder was a good two miles from my house. He made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order, as he says, to
41see the Things before they were killed. He dispatched a telegram, which never reached me, about four o'clock, and spent
42the evening at a music hall. In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my brother reached
43Waterloo in a cab. On the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an
44accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night. The nature of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed,
45the railway authorities did not clearly know at that time. There was very little excitement in the station, as the
46officials, failing to realise that anything further than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction had occurred,
47were running the theatre trains which usually passed through Woking round by Virginia Water or Guildford. They were busy
48making the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions. A
49nocturnal newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, to whom he bears a slight resemblance,
50waylaid and tried to interview him. Few people, excepting the railway officials, connected the breakdown with the
51Martians. I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning "all London was electrified by the
52news from Woking." As a matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant phrase. Plenty of Londoners
53did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning. Those who did took some time to realise all that the
54hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed. The majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers. The
55habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the Londoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a
56matter of course in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors: "About seven o'clock last night the
57Martians came out of the cylinder, and, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely wrecked Woking
58station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known.
59Maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field guns have been disabled by them. Flying hussars have
60been galloping into Chertsey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or Windsor. Great anxiety
61prevails in West Surrey, and earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonward." That was how the Sunday
62Sun put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt "handbook" article in the Referee compared the affair to a menagerie
63suddenly let loose in a village. No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured Martians, and there was
64still a fixed idea that these monsters must be sluggish: "crawling," "creeping painfully"--such expressions occurred in
65almost all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have been written by an eyewitness of their advance. The
66Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of it. But there was
67practically nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the
68news in their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along
69the roads Londonward, and that was all.
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