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1I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing into the road, but
2sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the darkness, he on the right and I on the
3left, for the Martians, who seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched and blackened area, now
4cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but with
5their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet, perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and
6smashed gun carriages. Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and deserted. Here we
7happened on no dead, though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my companion
8suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one of the houses. The first house we entered, after
9a little difficulty with the window, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable left in the place but
10some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water to drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our next
11house-breaking. We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house within
12a walled garden, and in the pantry of this domicile we found a store of food--two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked
13steak, and the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to subsist
14upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and
15some limp lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was firewood; there was also a
16cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits. We sat in the
17adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same
18bottle. The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to
19keep up his strength by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us. "It can't be midnight yet," I said, and
20then came a blinding glare of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly visible in green and
21black, and vanished again. And then followed such a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the
22heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry
23all about us, and the plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments upon our heads. I
24was knocked headlong across the floor against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long time, the curate
25told me, and when I came to we were in darkness again, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from a
26cut forehead, was dabbing water over me. For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things came to me
27slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself. "Are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper. At last I answered him.
28I sat up. "Don't move," he said. "The floor is covered with smashed crockery from the dresser. You can't possibly move
29without making a noise, and I fancy they are outside." We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each
30other breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down
31with a rumbling sound. Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle. "That!" said the curate, when
32presently it happened again. "Yes," I said. "But what is it?" "A Martian!" said the curate. I listened again. "It was
33not like the Heat-Ray," I said, and for a time I was inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled
34against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton Church. Our situation was so strange and
35incomprehensible that for three or four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light filtered in,
36not through the window, which remained black, but through a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken
37bricks in the wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the first time. The window had been
38burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet.
39Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe.
40The floor was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into, and since the
41daylight shone in there, it was evident the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this ruin
42was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the
43wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering from the walls above the
44kitchen range. As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body of a Martian, standing sentinel, I
45suppose, over the still glowing cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible out of the
46twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery. Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind. "The
47fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars, has struck this house and buried us under the ruins!" For a
48time the curate was silent, and then he whispered: "God have mercy upon us!" I heard him presently whimpering to
49himself. Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my
50eyes fixed on the faint light of the kitchen door. I could just see the curate's face, a dim, oval shape, and his collar
51and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet interval, a
52hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and
53seemed if anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured thudding and a vibration that made
54everything about us quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. Once the light was
55eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely dark. For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and
56shivering, until our tired attention failed. . . . At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to
57believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger was at a stride so insistent
58that it moved me to action. I told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the pantry. He made me
59no answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me. II.
60WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE. After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have dozed again, for
61when presently I looked round I was alone. The thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered for
62the curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him
63across the room, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the Martians. His shoulders were hunched, so
64that his head was hidden from me. I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed; and the place
65rocked with that beating thud. Through the aperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the
66warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I remained watching the curate, and then I advanced, crouching
67and stepping with extreme care amid the broken crockery that littered the floor.
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