The war of the worlds
has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the
Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through
a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches,
spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured
its more familiar features.
Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular
notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes
upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical _Punch_, I remember, made a happy
use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those
missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a
pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by
hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost
incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men
could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how
jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the
illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times
scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century
papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the
bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable
developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed.
One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 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 her, and pointed out Mars, a
bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many
telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of
excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing
music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the
people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the
sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into
melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the
red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the
sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.
II.
THE FALLING STAR.
Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the
morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the
atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary
falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it
that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on
meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about
ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth
about one hundred miles east of him.
I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my
French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved
in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet
this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space
must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only
looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it
travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many
people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of
it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. No
one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.
But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting
star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common
between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of
finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the
sand-pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the
projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every
direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away.
The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against
the dawn.
The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the
scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its
descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder,
caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured
incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached
the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most
meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still
so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach.
A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling
of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it
might be hollow.
He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for
itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its
unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some evidence
of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and
the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already
warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was
certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint
movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on the
common.
Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker,
the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling off the
circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and raining
down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a
sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.
For a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and, although the
heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to
see the Thing more clearly. He fancied even then that the cooling of
the body might account for this, but what disturbed that idea was the
fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.
And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the
cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement that
he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been
near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the
circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated,
until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk
forward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The
cylinder was artificial—hollow—with an end that screwed out! Something
within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!
“Good heavens!” said Ogilvy. “There’s a man in it—men in it! Half
roasted to death! Trying to escape!”
At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the flash
upon Mars.
The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he
forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. But
luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands
on the still-glowing metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment,
then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into
Woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o’clock. He
met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told
and his appearance were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that
the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the potman
who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell Bridge.
The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful
attempt to shut him into the taproom. That sobered him a little; and
when he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden, he called
over the palings and made himself understood.
“Henderson,” he called, “you saw that shooting star last night?”
“Well?” said Henderson.
“It’s out on Horsell Common now.”
“Good Lord!” said Henderson. “Fallen meteorite! That’s good.”
“But it’s something more than a meteorite. It’s a cylinder—an
artificial cylinder, man! And there’s something inside.”
Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.
“What’s that?” he said. He was deaf in one ear.
Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a minute or so
taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and
came out into the road. The two men hurried back at once to the common,
and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But now the
sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed
between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either entering
or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.
They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and,
meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside
must be insensible or dead.
Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They shouted
consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get
help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered,
running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop
folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their
bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway station at once, in
order to telegraph the news to London. The newspaper articles had
prepared men’s minds for the reception of the idea.
By eight o’clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already
started for the common to see the “dead men from Mars.” That was the
form the story took. I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a
quarter to nine when I went out to get my _Daily Chronicle_. I was
naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the
Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.
III.
ON HORSELL COMMON.
I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge
hole in which the cylinder lay. I have already described the appearance
of that colossal bulk, embedded in the ground. The turf and gravel
about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion. No doubt its
impact had caused a flash of fire. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there.
I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present, and
had gone away to breakfast at Henderson’s house.
There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with their
feet dangling, and amusing themselves—until I stopped them—by throwing
stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about it, they
began playing at “touch” in and out of the group of bystanders.
Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I employed
sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his little
boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were accustomed to
hang about the railway station. There was very little talking. Few of
the common people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical
ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at the big table
like end of the cylinder, which was still as Ogilvy and Henderson had
left it. I fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses
was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was
there, and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I
heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly ceased to
rotate.
It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of this
object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was really no
more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the
road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas float. It
required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the
grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white
metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an
unfamiliar hue. “Extra-terrestrial” had no meaning for most of the
onlookers.
At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come