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1Mrs. Elphinstone--that was the name of the woman in white--would listen to no reasoning, and kept calling upon "George";
2but her sister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my brother's suggestion. So,
3designing to cross the Great North Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much as
4possible. As the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew burning
5and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust. And as they advanced towards
6Barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew stronger. They began to meet more people. For the most part these were staring before
7them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on
8the ground. They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating
9invisible things. His paroxysm of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back. As my brother's party went on
10towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on their left,
11carrying a child and with two other children; and then passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a
12small portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of the lane, from between the villas that guarded it at its
13confluence with the high road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a
14bowler hat, grey with dust. There were three girls, East End factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in
15the cart. "This'll tike us rahnd Edgware?" asked the driver, wild-eyed, white-faced; and when my brother told him it
16would if he turned to the left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks. My brother noticed a pale grey
17smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them, and veiling the white façade of a terrace beyond the road that
18appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. Elphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame
19leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into
20the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs.
21The lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads. "Good heavens!" cried Mrs. Elphinstone. "What is this
22you are driving us into?" My brother stopped. For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human
23beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. A great bank of dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun,
24made everything within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of
25a dense crowd of horses and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every description. "Way!" my
26brother heard voices crying. "Make way!" It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of
27the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road
28a villa was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion. Two men came past
29them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and weeping. A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled
30dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother's threat. So much as they could see of the road
31Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas
32on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried
33past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust. "Go
34on! Go on!" cried the voices. "Way! Way!" One man's hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the pony's
35head. Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace by pace, down the lane. Edgware had been a scene of confusion,
36Chalk Farm a riotous tumult, but this was a whole population in movement. It is hard to imagine that host. It had no
37character of its own. The figures poured out past the corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the lane.
38Along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the wheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one
39another. The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little way for those swifter and more impatient
40vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so, sending the people
41scattering against the fences and gates of the villas. "Push on!" was the cry. "Push on! They are coming!" In one cart
42stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army, gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, "Eternity!
43Eternity!" His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the
44dust. Some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses and quarrelled with other drivers;
45some sat motionless, staring at nothing with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or lay prostrate in
46the bottoms of their conveyances. The horses' bits were covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot. There were cabs,
47carriages, shop-carts, waggons, beyond counting; a mail cart, a road-cleaner's cart marked "Vestry of St. Pancras," a
48huge timber waggon crowded with roughs. A brewer's dray rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood.
49"Clear the way!" cried the voices. "Clear the way!" "Eter-nity! Eter-nity!" came echoing down the road. There were sad,
50haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust,
51their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage.
52Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and
53foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or
54shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters,
55one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it. But varied as its composition was, certain things all
56that host had in common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel
57for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his
58knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon
59this multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid
60the various cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were
61hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a refrain: "Way! Way! The Martians are coming!" Few stopped and came aside from that
62flood. The lane opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a delusive appearance of coming from
63the direction of London. Yet a kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for
64the most part rested but a moment before plunging into it again. A little way down the lane, with two friends bending
65over him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. He was a lucky man to have friends. A little old
66man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his
67boot--his sock was blood-stained--shook out a pebble, and hobbled on again; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all
68alone, threw herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping. "I can't go on! I can't go on!" My brother woke from
69his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone. So soon as my
70brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened. "Ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her
71voice--"Ellen!" And the child suddenly darted away from my brother, crying "Mother!" "They are coming," said a man on
72horseback, riding past along the lane.
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