The war of the worlds
green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the
eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. The
sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green
powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with
its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner
of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a
drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first only to
dismiss.
I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself
now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. As
the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument
and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a
long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little
cage that hunched upon its back. Then something—something struggling
violently—was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma
against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, I saw
by the green brightness that it was a man. For an instant he was
clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed;
three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of
considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of
light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and
for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a
sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.
I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my
ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been crouching
silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, cried out
quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after me.
That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our horror
and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt an
urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape;
but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider our
position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was quite incapable
of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all
vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he had already sunk to
the level of an animal. But as the saying goes, I gripped myself with
both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could face the facts, that
terrible as our position was, there was as yet no justification for
absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the possibility of the
Martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment. Or
even if they kept it permanently, they might not consider it necessary
to guard it, and a chance of escape might be afforded us. I also
weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging a way out in a
direction away from the pit, but the chances of our emerging within
sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at first too great. And
I should have had to do all the digging myself. The curate would
certainly have failed me.
It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw the
lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the
Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall for
the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the door,
and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible;
but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth
collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost heart, and lay
down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no spirit even to
move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by
excavation.
It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at
first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about
by their overthrow through any human effort. But on the fourth or fifth
night I heard a sound like heavy guns.
It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The
Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a
fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a
handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the pit
immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them. Except
for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and patches of
white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for the clinking
of the handling-machine, quite still. That night was a beautiful
serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the sky to
herself. I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it was that
made me listen. Then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly like
the sound of great guns. Six distinct reports I counted, and after a
long interval six again. And that was all.
IV.
THE DEATH OF THE CURATE.
It was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the last
time, and presently found myself alone. Instead of keeping close to me
and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back into the
scullery. I was struck by a sudden thought. I went back quickly and
quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard the curate drinking.
I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy.
For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor and
broke, and I desisted and rose. We stood panting and threatening each
other. In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and told
him of my determination to begin a discipline. I divided the food in
the pantry, into rations to last us ten days. I would not let him eat
any more that day. In the afternoon he made a feeble effort to get at
the food. I had been dozing, but in an instant I was awake. All day and
all night we sat face to face, I weary but resolute, and he weeping and
complaining of his immediate hunger. It was, I know, a night and a day,
but to me it seemed—it seems now—an interminable length of time.
And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. For
two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests. There
were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times when I cajoled and
persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with the last bottle of
burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which I could get water.
But neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed beyond reason. He
would neither desist from his attacks on the food nor from his noisy
babbling to himself. The rudimentary precautions to keep our
imprisonment endurable he would not observe. Slowly I began to realise
the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to perceive that my sole
companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane.
From certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind wandered
at times. I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept. It sounds
paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the weakness and insanity
of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane man.
On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and
nothing I could do would moderate his speech.
“It is just, O God!” he would say, over and over again. “It is just. On
me and mine be the punishment laid. We have sinned, we have fallen
short. There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the dust,
and I held my peace. I preached acceptable folly—my God, what
folly!—when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and called
upon them to repent—repent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy! . .
. The wine press of God!”
Then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I withheld from
him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening. He began to raise
his voice—I prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on me—he threatened
he would shout and bring the Martians upon us. For a time that scared
me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of escape beyond
estimating. I defied him, although I felt no assurance that he might
not do this thing. But that day, at any rate, he did not. He talked
with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part of the eighth
and ninth days—threats, entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane
and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham of God’s service, such
as made me pity him. Then he slept awhile, and began again with renewed
strength, so loudly that I must needs make him desist.
“Be still!” I implored.
He rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near the
copper.
“I have been still too long,” he said, in a tone that must have reached
the pit, “and now I must bear my witness. Woe unto this unfaithful
city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! To the inhabitants of the earth by
reason of the other voices of the trumpet——”
“Shut up!” I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the Martians
should hear us. “For God’s sake——”
“Nay,” shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing likewise
and extending his arms. “Speak! The word of the Lord is upon me!”
In three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen.
“I must bear my witness! I go! It has already been too long delayed.”
I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In a
flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway
across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch of humanity
I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He went headlong
forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled over him and stood
panting. He lay still.
Suddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping
plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. I looked
up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming slowly across
the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris; another
limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. I stood
petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of glass plate near the
edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large dark eyes
of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came
feeling slowly through the hole.
I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the
scullery door. The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in the
room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this way
and that. For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful advance.
Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the scullery. I
trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright. I opened the door
of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness staring at the
faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening. Had the Martian
seen me? What was it doing now?
Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and then
it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a faint
metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring. Then a
heavy body—I knew too well what—was dragged across the floor of the
kitchen towards the opening. Irresistibly attracted, I crept to the
door and peeped into the kitchen. In the triangle of bright outer
sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling-machine,
scrutinizing the curate’s head. I thought at once that it would infer
my presence from the mark of the blow I had given him.
I crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover
myself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible in the
darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. Every now and then I
paused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacles through
the opening again.
Then the faint metallic jingle returned. I traced it slowly feeling
over the kitchen. Presently I heard it nearer—in the scullery, as I
judged. I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. I