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1My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had happened on the
2previous night. There he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace. Coming out, he bought a
3Referee. He became alarmed at the news in this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if communication were
4restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely
5affected by the strange intelligence that the newsvendors were disseminating. People were interested, or, if alarmed,
6alarmed only on account of the local residents. At the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey
7lines were now interrupted. The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from
8Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise detail out
9of them. "There's fighting going on about Weybridge" was the extent of their information. The train service was now very
10much disorganised. Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western network were
11standing about the station. One grey-headed old gentleman came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my
12brother. "It wants showing up," he said. One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, containing
13people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a
14blue and white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings. "There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in
15traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They come from Molesey and Weybridge and
16Walton, and they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get
17off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was
18thunder. What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't get out of their pit, can they?" My brother could not
19tell him. Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the clients of the underground railway, and
20that the Sunday excursionists began to return from all over the South-Western "lung"--Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park,
21Kew, and so forth--at unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of. Everyone
22connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered. About five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely
23excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost invariably closed, between the South-Eastern and
24the South-Western stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with soldiers.
25These were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an exchange of
26pleasantries: "You'll get eaten!" "We're the beast-tamers!" and so forth. A little while after that a squad of police
27came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother went out into the street again.
28The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On
29the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in patches. The sun
30was just setting, and the Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it is
31possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud. There was talk of a
32floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering
33in the west. In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just been rushed out of Fleet Street
34with still-wet newspapers and staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other down Wellington
35Street. "Fighting at Weybridge! Full description! Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!" He had to give threepence
36for a copy of that paper. Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full power and terror of these
37monsters. He learned that they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds swaying
38vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even the mightiest guns could
39not stand against them. They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the
40speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had
41been planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district and London. Five of the
42machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been destroyed. In the other cases the
43shells had missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers were
44mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was optimistic. The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They
45had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing
46forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich--even from
47the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen were in
48position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a vast or rapid
49concentration of military material. Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high
50explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and distributed. No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the
51strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were
52strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our
53millions. The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders, that at the outside there could not be
54more than five in each cylinder--fifteen altogether. And one at least was disposed of--perhaps more. The public would be
55fairly warned of the approach of danger, and elaborate measures were being taken for the protection of the people in the
56threatened southwestern suburbs. And so, with reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the
57authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed. This was printed in enormous type on paper so
58fresh that it was still wet, and there had been no time to add a word of comment. It was curious, my brother said, to
59see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had been hacked and taken out to give this place. All down Wellington
60Street people could be seen fluttering out the pink sheets and reading, and the Strand was suddenly noisy with the
61voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. Men came scrambling off buses to secure copies. Certainly this
62news excited people intensely, whatever their previous apathy. The shutters of a map shop in the Strand were being taken
63down, my brother said, and a man in his Sunday raiment, lemon-yellow gloves even, was visible inside the window hastily
64fastening maps of Surrey to the glass. Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his hand, my brother
65saw some of the fugitives from West Surrey. There was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in
66a cart such as greengrocers use. He was driving from the direction of Westminster Bridge; and close behind him came a
67hay waggon with five or six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. The faces of these people were
68haggard, and their entire appearance contrasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best appearance of the people on the
69omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs. They stopped at the Square as if undecided which
70way to take, and finally turned eastward along the Strand. Some way behind these came a man in workday clothes, riding
71one of those old-fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. He was dirty and white in the face. My brother turned
72down towards Victoria, and met a number of such people. He had a vague idea that he might see something of me. He
73noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of the refugees were exchanging news with the people on
74the omnibuses. One was professing to have seen the Martians. "Boilers on stilts, I tell you, striding along like men."
75Most of them were excited and animated by their strange experience.
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