The War of the Worlds .......................................................................................................................................1

H.G. Wells...............................................................................................................................................1

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched

keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied

themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a

man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their

assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No

one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to

dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental

habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps

inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that

are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic,

regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000

miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if

the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life

upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth

must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century,

expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly

level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the

superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour.

Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday

temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans

have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather

and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which

to us is still incredibly remote, has become a presentday problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate

pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And

looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its

nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet,

green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses

through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navycrowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the

monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for

existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its

cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals.

To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation,

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own

species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior

races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of

extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtletytheir mathematical learning is

evidently far in excess of oursand to have carried out their preparations with a wellnigh perfect

unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the

nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planetit is odd, bythebye, that for countless

centuries Mars has been the star of warbut failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick

Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the

issue of NATURE dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the

huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as

yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of

the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas

upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at

once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards

this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff

of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a

little note in the DAILY TELEGRAPH, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that

ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the

wellknown astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his

feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.

In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent

observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of

the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roofan oblong profundity with the stardust streaked

across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep

blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and

still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was,

so silvery warma pin'shead of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply

that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from usmore than forty millions of miles of void. Few

people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and

all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty

starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and

small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by

so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much

struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the

edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy

and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and

feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under

twentyfour hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, with patches of

green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the

meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and

then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having

inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the

planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after;

and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth 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

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 nineteenthcentury 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

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

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

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

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 duncoloured 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

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.

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

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 artificialhollowwith an end that screwed out!

"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in itmen 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

stillglowing 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 wildhis hat

had fallen off in the pitthat the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the potman who

was just unlocking the doors of the publichouse 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.

"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something

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

They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, meeting with no response, they both

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

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

There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with their feet dangling, and amusing

themselvesuntil I stopped themby throwing stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about

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 tablelike 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

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 yellowishwhite metal that gleamed

in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. "Extraterrestrial" had no meaning for

At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come from the planet Mars, but I judged it

improbable that it contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite of

Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its

containing manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might arise, whether we should find coins and

models in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it

opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in

Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations.

In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered very much. The early editions of the evening

and so forth. In addition, Ogilvy's wire to the Astronomical Exchange had roused every observatory in the

There were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station standing in the road by the sand pits, a

basketchaise from Chobham, and a rather lordly carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of bicycles. In

addition, a large number of people must have walked, in spite of the heat of the day, from Woking and

Chertsey, so that there was altogether quite a considerable crowdone or two gaily dressed ladies among the

It was glaringly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, and the only shadow was that of the few

scattered pine trees. The burning heather had been extinguished, but the level ground towards Ottershaw was

blackened as far as one could see, and still giving off vertical streamers of smoke. An enterprising

sweetstuff dealer in the Chobham Road had sent up his son with a barrowload of green apples and ginger

Going to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a group of about half a dozen menHenderson, Ogilvy,

and a tall, fairhaired man that I afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with several workmen

wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving directions in a clear, highpitched voice. He was standing on

the cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson and streaming with perspiration,

A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower end was still embedded. As soon as

Ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and asked me if

The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to their excavations, especially the boys.

They wanted a light railing put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring was

occasionally still audible within the case, but that the workmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded

no grip to them. The case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the faint sounds we heard

I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the privileged spectators within the contemplated

enclosure. I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from London by the six

o'clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then about a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and

When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of

Woking, and one or two persons were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black

against the lemon yellow of the skya couple of hundred people, perhaps. There were raised voices, and

some sort of struggle appeared to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my mind. As

"It's amovin'," he said to me as he passed; "ascrewin' and ascrewin' out. I don't like it. I'm agoin' 'ome, I

I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three hundred people elbowing and jostling

The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one seemed greatly excited. I heard a

"I say!" said Ogilvy; "help keep these idiots back. We don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!"

I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to

The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two feet of shining screw projected.

Somebody blundered against me, and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and

as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing

concussion. I stuck my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a

moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in my eyes.

I think everyone expected to see a man emergepossibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in

all essentials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish

billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous diskslike eyes. Then something resembling

a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled

A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes

fixed upon the cylinder still, from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way

back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I

heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman

struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit

running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.

Two large darkcoloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the

thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of

which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank

tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The

peculiar Vshaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin

beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the

tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of

movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earthabove all, the extraordinary intensity of the

immense eyeswere at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid

in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty.

Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a

thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith another of these

I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped, panting, and waited further developments.

The common round the sand pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a halffascinated terror,

staring at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then,

with a renewed horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the

head of the shopman who had fallen in, but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now

he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible. Suddenly

he vanished, and I could have fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to go back

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder

had made. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the

sighta dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in

ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts,

and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black

against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth

from their planet, a kind of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing kneedeep in the heather,

I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate longing to peer into it. I began walking,

therefore, in a big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid

these newcomers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across

the sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its

apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion. What could be going on there?

Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups one a little crowd towards Woking, the other a

knot of people in the direction of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict. There were few near

me. One man I approachedhe was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine, though I did not know his

"What ugly brutes!" he said. "Good God! What ugly brutes!" He repeated this over and over again.

"Did you see a man in the pit?" I said; but he made no answer to that. We became silent, and stood watching

for a time side by side, deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. Then I shifted my

position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The crowd far away on the left, towards

Woking, seemed to grow, and I heard now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards Chobham

It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I suppose the new arrivals from Woking also

helped to restore confidence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the sand

pits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained

unbroken. Vertical black figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch, and advance again,

spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns.

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and

the gride of wheels. I saw a lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards of the pit,

advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since the Martians were evidently, in spite

of their repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching them with

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there,

but afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this attempt at communication.

This little group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost

complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet distances.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three

distinct puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead

and the hazy stretches of brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken

abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a

little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed

out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long,

loud, droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group

of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each

Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd.

All I felt was that it was something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of light, and a man

fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and

every dry furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away towards Knaphill I saw the

It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I

perceived it coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied to

stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled.

Then it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather between me and the

Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something

fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from Woking station opens out on the common. Forthwith

the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, domelike object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the

flashes of light. Had that death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in my surprise.

But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me suddenly dark and unfamiliar.

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where its roadways lay grey and pale

under the deep blue sky of the early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the stars were

mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and

the roofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the western afterglow. The Martians and their

appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast upon which their restless mirror wobbled. Patches

of bush and isolated trees here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses towards Woking station

Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The little group of black specks with the flag

of white had been swept out of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, had scarcely

It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless, unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing

The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all

about me. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon

the very verge of safety, this mysterious deathas swift as the passage of lightwould leap after me from

It is still a matter of wonder how the Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that

in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute nonconductivity.

This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished

parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of

light. But no one has absolutely proved these details. However it is done, it is certain that a beam of heat is

the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into

flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water,

That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the pit, charred and distorted beyond recognition,

and all night long the common from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.

The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and Ottershaw about the same time. In

Woking the shops had closed when the tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so forth,

attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the Horsell Bridge and along the road between the

hedges that runs out at last upon the common. You may imagine the young people brushed up after the

labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would make any novelty, the excuse for walking together

and enjoying a trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming.

As yet, of course, few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had opened, though poor Henderson had

sent a messenger on a bicycle to the post office with a special wire to an evening paper.

As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they found little knots of people talking excitedly

and peering at the spinning mirror over the sand pits, and the newcomers were, no doubt, soon infected by

By half past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may have been a crowd of three hundred people

or more at this place, besides those who had left the road to approach the Martians nearer. There were three

policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under instructions from Stent, to keep the people

back and deter them from approaching the cylinder. There was some booing from those more thoughtless and

Stent and Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, had telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks

as soon as the Martians emerged, for the help of a company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from

violence. After that they returned to lead that illfated advance. The description of their death, as it was seen

by the crowd, tallies very closely with my own impressions: the three puffs of green smoke, the deep

But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only the fact that a hummock of heathery sand

intercepted the lower part of the HeatRay saved them. Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few

yards higher, none could have lived to tell the tale. They saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible

hand, as it were, lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through the twilight. Then, with a whistling note

that rose above the droning of the pit, the beam swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech

trees that line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows, firing the window frames, and

bringing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the gable of the house nearest the corner.

In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of the igniting trees, the panicstricken crowd seems to have swayed

hesitatingly for some moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and single leaves like

puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then came a crying from the common. There were shrieks and

shouts, and suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over

"They're coming!" a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was turning and pushing at those behind, in

order to clear their way to Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep. Where the

road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred.

All that crowd did not escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled

For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling

through the heather. All about me gathered the invisible terrors of the Martians; that pitiless sword of heat

seemed whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended and smote me out of life. I came into

the road between the crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.

At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the violence of my emotion and of my flight, and I

staggered and fell by the wayside. That was near the bridge that crosses the canal by the gasworks. I fell and

I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not clearly understand how I came there. My

terror had fallen from me like a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its fastener. A

few minutes before, there had only been three real things before methe immensity of the night and space

and nature, my own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it was as if something

turned over, and the point of view altered abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to

the other. I was immediately the self of every day againa decent, ordinary citizen. The silent common, the

impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream. I asked myself had these latter

I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My mind was blank wonder. My muscles and

nerves seemed drained of their strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the

figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good

night. I was minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and

Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted

windows, went flying southclatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of people talked in the

gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real

and so familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I told myself, could not be.

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer

from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the

outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it

all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream.

But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles

away. There was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. I stopped at

"People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman over the gate. "What's it all abart?"

"Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks"; and all three of them laughed.

I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them what I had seen. They laughed again at my

I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine,

and so soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The dinner, which was a

cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the table while I told my story.

"There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had aroused; "they are the most sluggish things I ever saw

crawl. They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. . . . But the

My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased

I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the

Martians establishing themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. On the

surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore,

would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His own body

would be a cope of lead to him. That, indeed, was the general opinion. Both THE TIMES and the DAILY

TELEGRAPH, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious

The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen or far less argon (whichever way one

likes to put it) than does Mars. The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians

indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. And, in the second place, we

all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to dispense

But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was dead against the chances of the

invaders. With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I

"They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my wineglass. "They are dangerous because, no doubt,

they are mad with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living thingscertainly no intelligent living

"A shell in the pit" said I, "if the worst comes to the worst will kill them all."

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I

remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face

peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniturefor in

those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuriesthe crimsonpurple wine in my glass, are

photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness,

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that

shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear."

I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.

The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that

Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the

series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair of

compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand pits, I doubt if you would

have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or

London people lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the newcomers.

Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not

In London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to

be a canard, and his evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no replythe man

Even within the fivemile circle the great majority of people were inert. I have already described the

behaviour of the men and women to whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping;

working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young people were

Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the publichouses, and here

and there a messenger, or even an eyewitness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a

shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking,

sleeping, went on as it had done for countless yearsas though no planet Mars existed in the sky. Even at

In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on, others were shunting on the sidings,

passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. A boy from

the town, trenching on Smith's monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon's news. The ringing impact

of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of "Men from Mars!"

Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance

than drunkards might have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage

windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow

and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath fire was

happening. It was only round the edge of the common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a

dozen villas burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham

and Horsell bridges. One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and

crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a lightray, like the beam of a

warship's searchlight swept the common, and the HeatRay was ready to follow. Save for such, that big area

of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the

So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth

like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it was a patch of

silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes

here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther

than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as

it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines

they were making ready, and ever and again a puff of greenishwhite smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.

About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and deployed along the edge of the common to

form a cordon. Later a second company marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the

common. Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day, and one,

Major Eden, was reported to be missing. The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was

busy questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the

business. About eleven, the next morning's papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars, two Maxims, and

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the

pine woods to the northwest. It had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning.

Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am

told, a rapidly fluctuating barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in sleeping, and I

rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but towards the common there was

The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot and I went round to the side gate to ask the latest

news. He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns were

expected. Thena familiar, reassuring noteI heard a train running towards Woking.

"They aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can possibly be avoided."

I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then strolled in to breakfast. It was a most

unexceptional morning. My neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy

"It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he said. "It would be curious to know how they live on

He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was

enthusiastic. At the same time he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet Golf Links.

"They say," said he, "that there's another of those blessed things fallen therenumber two. But one's enough,

surely. This lot'll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled." He laughed with an air

of the greatest good humour as he said this. The woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of

smoke to me. "They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf," he

After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I

found a group of soldierssappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and

showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over

the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing sentinel

there. I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening.

None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with

questions. They said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was

that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the

common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I

"Get aht!," said another. "What's cover against this 'ere 'eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as

"Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha" been born a rabbit Snippy."

"'Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.

"Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers of menfighters of fish it is this time!"

"Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said the little dark man. "You carn tell what they

"Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't no time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at

So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning

But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not

succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the hands

of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as

well as busy. I found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and I heard for the

first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had

I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order

to refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the railway station to

get an evening paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing

of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn't know. The Martians did not show an

inch of themselves. They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost

continuous streamer of smoke. Apparently they were busy getting ready for a struggle. "Fresh attempts have

been made to signal, but without success," was the stereotyped formula of the papers. A sapper told me it was

done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole. The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we

I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me. My imagination became

belligerent, and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my schoolboy dreams of battle

and heroism came back. It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time. They seemed very helpless in that pit

About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I

learned that the smouldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, in the

hope of destroying that object before it opened. It was only about five, however, that a field gun reached

About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle

that was lowering upon us, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately after a gust of

firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and,

starting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame,

and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the mosque had vanished, and

the roof line of the college itself looked as if a hundredton gun had been at work upon it. One of our

chimneys cracked as if a shot had hit it, flew, and a piece of it came clattering down the tiles and made a heap

I and my wife stood amazed. Then I realised that the crest of Maybury Hill must be within range of the

At that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out into the road. Then I fetched out the

servant, telling her I would go upstairs myself for the box she was clamouring for.

"We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common.

She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of their houses, astonished.

Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge; three galloped through the open gates of

the Oriental College; two others dismounted, and began running from house to house. The sun, shining

through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid

"Stop here," said I; "you are safe here"; and I started off at once for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord

had a horse and dog cart. I ran, for I perceived that in a moment everyone upon this side of the hill would be

moving. I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what was going on behind his house. A man stood with his

"Lord!" said the landlord; "what's the hurry? I'm selling my bit of a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back?

I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the dog cart. At the time it did not seem to me

nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his. I took care to have the cart there and then, drove it off

down the road, and, leaving it in charge of my wife and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few

valuables, such plate as we had, and so forth. The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this,

and the palings up the road glowed red. While I was occupied in this way, one of the dismounted hussars

came running up. He was going from house to house, warning people to leave. He was going on as I came out

of my front door, lugging my treasures, done up in a tablecloth. I shouted after him:

He turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out in a thing like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate

of the house at the crest. A sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment. I ran

to my neighbour's door and rapped to satisfy myself of what I already knew, that his wife had gone to London

with him and had locked up their house. I went in again, according to my promise, to get my servant's box,

lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into

the driver's seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise, and spanking

In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with

its swinging sign. I saw the doctor's cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the

hillside I was leaving. Thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the

still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. The smoke already extended far away

to the east and westto the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted

with people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one heard the

whirr of a machinegun that was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles. Apparently the

I am not an expert driver, and I had immediately to turn my attention to the horse. When I looked back again

the second hill had hidden the black smoke. I slashed the horse with the whip, and gave him a loose rein until

Woking and Send lay between us and that quivering tumult. I overtook and passed the doctor between

Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of hay was in the air through the lush

meadows beyond Pyrford, and the hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dogroses.

The heavy firing that had broken out while we were driving down Maybury Hill ceased as abruptly as it

began, leaving the evening very peaceful and still. We got to Leatherhead without misadventure about nine

o'clock, and the horse had an hour's rest while I took supper with my cousins and commended my wife to

My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed oppressed with forebodings of evil. I talked to

her reassuringly, pointing out that the Martians were tied to the Pit by sheer heaviness, and at the utmost

could but crawl a little out of it; but she answered only in monosyllables. Had it not been for my promise to

the innkeeper, she would, I think, have urged me to stay in Leatherhead that night. Would that I had! Her

For my own part, I had been feverishly excited all day. Something very like the war fever that occasionally

runs through a civilised community had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very sorry that I had

to return to Maybury that night. I was even afraid that that last fusillade I had heard might mean the

extermination of our invaders from Mars. I can best express my state of mind by saying that I wanted to be in

It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night was unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out of the

lighted passage of my cousins' house, it seemed indeed black, and it was as hot and close as the day.

Overhead the clouds were driving fast, albeit not a breath stirred the shrubs about us. My cousins' man lit

both lamps. Happily, I knew the road intimately. My wife stood in the light of the doorway, and watched me

until I jumped up into the dog cart. Then abruptly she turned and went in, leaving my cousins side by side

I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife's fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to

the Martians. At that time I was absolutely in the dark as to the course of the evening's fighting. I did not

know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the

way I returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western horizon a bloodred glow,

which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled

Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life; but I

narrowly escaped an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people stood with their

backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they knew of the things happening

beyond the hill, nor do I know if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely, or deserted and

From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the Wey, and the red glare was hidden from

me. As I ascended the little hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the trees about

me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. Then I heard midnight pealing out from

Pyrford Church behind me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its treetops and roofs black

Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards

Addlestone. I felt a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of

green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left. It was the third falling star!

Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm,

and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth and bolted.

A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we clattered. Once the lightning

had begun, it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps, treading one

on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a

gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The flickering light was blinding and

At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that

was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of a house,

but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive visiona

moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the

crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the

young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now

across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling

with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to

vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you

imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant

flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man

thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared,

rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it! At the sight of the second

monster my nerve went altogether. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse's head hard round to the

right and in another moment the dog cart had heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I

I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse

lay motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the

overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal

Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way.

Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a

young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and

the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about.

Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of green

smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black

As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder"Aloo! Aloo!"and in another

minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I have no doubt this

Thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from Mars.

For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the intermittent light, these monstrous

beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning, and as it

came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. Now and then came a gap in

I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some time before my blank astonishment would

let me struggle up the bank to a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.

Not far from me was a little oneroomed squatter's hut of wood, surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I

struggled to my feet at last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover, I made a run for this. I

hammered at the door, but I could not make the people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time

I desisted, and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded in crawling, unobserved

Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my own house. I walked among the trees

trying to find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming

infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in columns through the gaps in the heavy

If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I should have immediately worked my way

round through Byfleet to Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that night

the strangeness of things about me, and my physical wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary,

I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as much motive as I had. I staggered through

the trees, fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out into the lane that ran

down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a

muddy torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back.

He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to

him. So heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to win my way up the

hill. I went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its palings.

Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of lightning, saw between my feet a heap of

black broadcloth and a pair of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the flicker of light

had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man,

cheaply but not shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay crumpled up close to the

Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before touched a dead body, I stooped and turned

him over to feel for his heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The lightning flashed

for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog,

I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my way by the police station and the College

Arms towards my own house. Nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there still came

a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail. So far as I could see by

the flashes, the houses about me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a dark heap lay in the road.

Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet, but I had not the courage to

shout or to go to them. I let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to the

foot of the staircase, and sat down. My imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the

I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, shivering violently.

I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves. After a time I

discovered that I was cold and wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I got up almost

mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some whiskey, and then I was moved to change my

After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so I do not know. The window of my study

looks over the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this window had

been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed, the side

The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone, and

very far away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across the light huge

It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on firea broad hillside set with minute

tongues of flame, swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red reflection upon

the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the

window and hid the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the clear form of them, nor

recognise the black objects they were busied upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections

of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of burning was in the air.

I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I did so, the view opened out until, on the one

hand, it reached to the houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and blackened pine

woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the

houses along the Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. The light upon the railway

puzzled me at first; there were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs.

Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon

Between these three main centres of lightthe houses, the train, and the burning county towards

Chobham stretched irregular patches of dark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing

and smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set with fire. It reminded me, more

than anything else, of the Potteries at night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I peered

intently for them. Later I saw against the light of Woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after

And this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos! What had

happened in the last seven hours I still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to guess, the

relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps I had seen disgorged from the cylinder.

With a queer feeling of impersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, and stared at the

blackened country, and particularly at the three gigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare

They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be. Were they intelligent mechanisms?

Such a thing I felt was impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's

brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first

time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.

The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was

dropping into the west, when a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the fence, and

rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I looked down and saw him dimly, clambering

over the palings. At the sight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the window

He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came over and across the lawn to the corner of the house.

"Who's there?" he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up.

I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door again. I could not see his face. He was

"What hasn't?" In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of despair. "They wiped us outsimply wiped

He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep

like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent

It was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my questions, and then he answered

perplexingly and brokenly. He was a driver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven. At

that time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the first party of Martians were crawling

Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fightingmachines I had seen. The

gun he drove had been unlimbered near Horsell, in order to command the sand pits, and its arrival it was that

had precipitated the action. As the limber gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came

down, throwing him into a depression of the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded behind him, the

ammunition blew up, there was fire all about him, and he found himself lying under a heap of charred dead

"I lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out.

And the smellgood God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I

had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before then stumble, bang, swish!"

He had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out furtively across the common. The Cardigan men

had tried a rush, in skirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence. Then the monster had

risen to its feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and fro across the common among the few fugitives, with

its headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human being. A kind of arm carried a

complicated metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked

In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a living thing left upon the common, and every

bush and tree upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. The hussars had been on the

road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. He heard the Martians rattle for a time

and then become still. The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until the last; then in a

moment the HeatRay was brought to bear, and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing shut

off the HeatRay, and turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards the smouldering

pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it did so a second glittering Titan built itself up out of the

The second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across the

hot heather ash towards Horsell. He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road, and so

escaped to Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The place was impassable. It seems there were a few

people alive there, frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded. He was turned aside by the fire,

and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw

this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock his head against the trunk of a

pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway embankment.

Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury, in the hope of getting out of danger Londonward.

People were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards Woking village

and Send. He had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains near the railway arch

That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things

he had seen. He had eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I found some mutton

and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp for fear of attracting the Martians, and

ever and again our hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked, things about us came darkly out of

the darkness, and the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct. It would seem

that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to see his face, blackened and haggard,

When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, and I looked again out of the open

window. In one night the valley had become a valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled now. Where flames

had been there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and

blasted and blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of

dawn. Yet here and there some object had had the luck to escapea white railway signal here, the end of a

greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the history of warfare had destruction

been so indiscriminate and so universal. And shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic

giants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying the desolation they had made.

It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up

and out of it towards the brightening dawnstreamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.

Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of

As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we had watched the Martians, and

The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in. He proposed, he said, to make his

way Londonward, and thence rejoin his batteryNo. 12, of the Horse Artillery. My plan was to return at

once to Leatherhead; and so greatly had the strength of the Martians impressed me that I had determined to

take my wife to Newhaven, and go with her out of the country forthwith. For I already perceived clearly that

the country about London must inevitably be the scene of a disastrous struggle before such creatures as these

Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with its guarding giants. Had I been alone, I

think I should have taken my chance and struck across country. But the artilleryman dissuaded me: "It's no

kindness to the right sort of wife," he said, "to make her a widow"; and in the end I agreed to go with him,

under cover of the woods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I parted with him. Thence I would make

I should have started at once, but my companion had been in active service and he knew better than that. He

made me ransack the house for a flask, which he filled with whiskey; and we lined every available pocket

with packets of biscuits and slices of meat. Then we crept out of the house, and ran as quickly as we could

down the illmade road by which I had come overnight. The houses seemed deserted. In the road lay a group

of three charred bodies close together, struck dead by the HeatRay; and here and there were things that

people had droppeda clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor valuables. At the corner turning up

towards the post office a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture, and horseless, heeled over on a broken

Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of the houses had suffered very greatly here.

The HeatRay had shaved the chimney tops and passed. Yet, save ourselves, there did not seem to be a living

soul on Maybury Hill. The majority of the inhabitants had escaped, I suppose, by way of the Old Woking

We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now from the overnight hail, and broke into

the woods at the foot of the hill. We pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a soul. The

woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of woods; for the most part the trees had

fallen, but a certain proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown foliage instead of green.

On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the nearer trees; it had failed to secure its footing. In one

place the woodmen had been at work on Saturday; trees, felled and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing, with

heaps of sawdust by the sawingmachine and its engine. Hard by was a temporary hut, deserted. There was

not a breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still. Even the birds were hushed, and as we

hurried along I and the artilleryman talked in whispers and looked now and again over our shoulders. Once or

After a time we drew near the road, and as we did so we heard the clatter of hoofs and saw through the tree

stems three cavalry soldiers riding slowly towards Woking. We hailed them, and they halted while we hurried

towards them. It was a lieutenant and a couple of privates of the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite,

"You are the first men I've seen coming this way this morning," said the lieutenant. "What's brewing?"

His voice and face were eager. The men behind him stared curiously. The artilleryman jumped down the bank

"Gun destroyed last night, sir. Have been hiding. Trying to rejoin battery, sir. You'll come in sight of the

"Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in

"You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire and strikes you dead."

"No, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the HeatRay. Halfway through, the lieutenant

interrupted him and looked up at me. I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road.

"Well," said the lieutenant, "I suppose it's my business to see it too. Look here"to the artilleryman"we're

detailed here clearing people out of their houses. You'd better go along and report yourself to

BrigadierGeneral Marvin, and tell him all you know. He's at Weybridge. Know the way?"

"At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward. He thanked me and rode on, and we saw

Farther along we came upon a group of three women and two children in the road, busy clearing out a

labourer's cottage. They had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with uncleanlooking

bundles and shabby furniture. They were all too assiduously engaged to talk to us as we passed.

By Byfleet station we emerged from the pine trees, and found the country calm and peaceful under the

morning sunlight. We were far beyond the range of the HeatRay there, and had it not been for the silent

desertion of some of the houses, the stirring movement of packing in others, and the knot of soldiers standing

on the bridge over the railway and staring down the line towards Woking, the day would have seemed very

Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road to Addlestone, and suddenly through

the gate of a field we saw, across a stretch of flat meadow, six twelvepounders standing neatly at equal

distances pointing towards Woking. The gunners stood by the guns waiting, and the ammunition waggons

Farther on towards Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a number of men in white fatigue jackets

"It's bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow," said the artilleryman. "They 'aven't seen that firebeam

The officers who were not actively engaged stood and stared over the treetops southwestward, and the men

Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, some of them dismounted, some on

horseback, were hunting them about. Three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles,

and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street. There were scores of

people, most of them sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were having the

greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with

a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating with the corporal

"Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the pine tops that hid the Martians.

"Death!" I shouted. "Death is coming! Death!" and leaving him to digest that if he could, I hurried on after

the artilleryman. At the corner I looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still standing by his box,

No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established; the whole place was in such

confusion as I had never seen in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing

miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants of the place, men in golf and boating

costumes, wives prettily dressed, were packing, riverside loafers energetically helping, children excited,

and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst

of it all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration, and his bell was jangling out above

I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we

had brought with us. Patrols of soldiershere no longer hussars, but grenadiers in whitewere warning

people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began. We saw as we crossed the

railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station, and the

swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe, in

order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and I have heard since that a savage struggle

We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near Shepperton

Lock where the Wey and Thames join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little cart.

The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On

the Shepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of Shepperton Church it has been

Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there

were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. People came panting

along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them,

with some of their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get away from

There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea people seemed to have here was that the

Martians were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly

destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would glance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows

Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the

Surrey side. The people who landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big ferryboat

had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the

fugitives, without offering to help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours.

"What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!" said a man near me to a yelping dog. Then the

sound came again, this time from the direction of Chertsey, a muffled thudthe sound of a gun.

The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right, unseen

because of the trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. Everyone

stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat

meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows motionless in the warm

"The sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubtfully. A haziness rose over the treetops.

Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and

hung; and forthwith the ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two or three

"Here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "Yonder! D'yer see them? Yonder!"

Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armoured Martians appeared, far away over the little

trees, across the flat meadows that stretched towards Chertsey, and striding hurriedly towards the river. Little

cowled figures they seemed at first, going with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds.

Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armoured bodies glittered in the sun as they swept

swiftly forward upon the guns, growing rapidly larger as they drew nearer. One on the extreme left, the

remotest that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, and the ghostly, terrible HeatRay I had already seen

At sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for

a moment horrorstruck. There was no screaming or shouting, but a silence. Then a hoarse murmur and a

movement of feeta splashing from the water. A man, too frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on

his shoulder, swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden. A woman thrust

at me with her hand and rushed past me. I turned with the rush of the people, but I was not too terrified for

I faced about again, and rushed towards the approaching Martian, rushed right down the gravelly beach and

headlong into the water. Others did the same. A boatload of people putting back came leaping out as I rushed

past. The stones under my feet were muddy and slippery, and the river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty

feet scarcely waistdeep. Then, as the Martian towered overhead scarcely a couple of hundred yards away, I

flung myself forward under the surface. The splashes of the people in the boats leaping into the river sounded

like thunderclaps in my ears. People were landing hastily on both sides of the river. But the Martian machine

took no more notice for the moment of the people running this way and that than a man would of the

confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot has kicked. When, half suffocated, I raised my head above

water, the Martian's hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing across the river, and as it advanced it

In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading halfway across. The knees of its foremost legs

bent at the farther bank, and in another moment it had raised itself to its full height again, close to the village

of Shepperton. Forthwith the six guns which, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind

the outskirts of that village, fired simultaneously. The sudden near concussion, the last close upon the first,

made my heart jump. The monster was already raising the case generating the HeatRay as the first shell

I gave a cry of astonishment. I saw and thought nothing of the other four Martian monsters; my attention was

riveted upon the nearer incident. Simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood

The shell burst clean in the face of the Thing. The hood bulged, flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered

I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me. I could have leaped out of the water with

The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a

miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the HeatRay now rigidly upheld, it

reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed

to the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to

destruction. It drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church,

smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on and

A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud, and shattered metal shot far up into the

sky. As the camera of the HeatRay hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. In another

moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend

upstream. I saw people struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting faintly above the

For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need of selfpreservation. I splashed through the

tumultuous water, pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the bend. Half a dozen

deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves. The fallen Martian came into sight

Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could

see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud

and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless

purposelessness of these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life amid the

waves. Enormous quantities of a ruddybrown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.

My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling, like that of the thing called a siren in

our manufacturing towns. A man, kneedeep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me and pointed.

Looking back, I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction

At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered

painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly

When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the hair and water from my eyes, the steam

was rising in a whirling white fog that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was deafening. Then I

saw them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified by the mist. They had passed by me, and two were

The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two hundred yards from me, the other

towards Laleham. The generators of the HeatRays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way

The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noisesthe clangorous din of the Martians,

the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring

of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river, and as the HeatRay went

to and fro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that gave place at once to

a smoky dance of lurid flames. The nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint and

For a moment perhaps I stood there, breasthigh in the almost boiling water, dumbfounded at my position,

hopeless of escape. Through the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out

of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running

Then suddenly the white flashes of the HeatRay came leaping towards me. The houses caved in as they

dissolved at its touch, and darted out flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar. The Ray flickered up and

down the towing path, licking off the people who ran this way and that, and came down to the water's edge

not fifty yards from where I stood. It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the water in its track rose in a

In another moment the huge wave, wellnigh at the boilingpoint had rushed upon me. I screamed aloud, and

scalded, half blinded, agonised, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot

stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare

gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing but death.

I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a score of yards of my head, driving

straight into the loose gravel, whirling it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense, and then of

the four carrying the debris of their comrade between them, now clear and then presently faint through a veil

of smoke, receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of river and meadow. And then, very

After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons, the Martians retreated to their original

position upon Horsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the de'bris of their smashed

companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray and negligible victim as myself. Had they left their

comrade and pushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and London but batteries of

twelvepounder guns, and they would certainly have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their

approach; as sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent would have been as the earthquake that destroyed

But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its interplanetary flight; every twentyfour hours

brought them reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now fully alive to the

tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into

position until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston

and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle. And through the charred and desolated areaperhaps

twenty square miles altogetherthat encircled the Martian encampment on Horsell Common, through

charred and ruined villages among the green trees, through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been

but a day ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs that were presently to warn the

gunners of the Martian approach. But the Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger

of human proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either cylinder, save at the price of his life.

It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the afternoon in going to and fro, transferring

everything from the second and third cylindersthe second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third at

Pyrfordto their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above the blackened heather and ruined

buildings that stretched far and wide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast

fightingmachines and descended into the pit. They were hard at work there far into the night, and the

towering pillar of dense green smoke that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and

And while the Martians behind me were thus preparing for their next sally, and in front of me Humanity

gathered for the battle, I made my way with infinite pains and labour from the fire and smoke of burning

I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting downstream; and throwing off the most of my

sodden clothes, I went after it, gained it, and so escaped out of that destruction. There were no oars in the

boat, but I contrived to paddle, as well as my parboiled hands would allow, down the river towards Halliford

and Walton, going very tediously and continually looking behind me, as you may well understand. I followed

the river, because I considered that the water gave me my best chance of escape should these giants return.

The hot water from the Martian's overthrow drifted downstream with me, so that for the best part of a mile I

could see little of either bank. Once, however, I made out a string of black figures hurrying across the

meadows from the direction of Weybridge. Halliford, it seemed, was deserted, and several of the houses

facing the river were on fire. It was strange to see the place quite tranquil, quite desolate under the hot blue

sky, with the smoke and little threads of flame going straight up into the heat of the afternoon. Never before

had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive crowd. A little farther on the dry

reeds up the bank were smoking and glowing, and a line of fire inland was marching steadily across a late

For a long time I drifted, so painful and weary was I after the violence I had been through, and so intense the

heat upon the water. Then my fears got the better of me again, and I resumed my paddling. The sun scorched

my bare back. At last, as the bridge at Walton was coming into sight round the bend, my fever and faintness

overcame my fears, and I landed on the Middlesex bank and lay down, deadly sick, amid the long grass. I

suppose the time was then about four or five o'clock. I got up presently, walked perhaps half a mile without

meeting a soul, and then lay down again in the shadow of a hedge. I seem to remember talking, wanderingly,

to myself during that last spurt. I was also very thirsty, and bitterly regretful I had drunk no more water. It is a

curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach

I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that probably I dozed. I became aware of him as a

seated figure in sootsmudged shirt sleeves, and with his upturned, cleanshaven face staring at a faint

flickering that danced over the sky. The sky was what is called a mackerel skyrows and rows of faint

For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I dare say he found me a strange enough figure,

naked, save for my watersoaked trousers and socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders blackened by the

smoke. His face was a fair weakness, his chin retreated, and his hair lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his

low forehead; his eyes were rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring. He spoke abruptly, looking vacantly

"Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking

through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon, and thenfire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom

He gripped his knees and turned to look at me again. For half a minute, perhaps, he stared silently.

"I was walking through the roads to clear my brain," he said. "And suddenlyfire, earthquake, death!"

"All the workall the Sunday schools What have we donewhat has Weybridge done? Everything

goneeverything destroyed. The church! We rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence!

By this time I was beginning to take his measure. The tremendous tragedy in which he had been involvedit

was evident he was a fugitive from Weybridgehad driven him to the very verge of his reason.

"What are we to do?" he asked. "Are these creatures everywhere ? Has the earth been given over to them?"

"Things have changed," I said, quietly. "You must keep your head. There is still hope."

I began to explain my view of our position. He listened at first, but as I went on the interest dawning in his

"This must be the beginning of the end," he said, interrupting me. "The end! The great and terrible day of the

Lord! When men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide themhide them

I began to understand the position. I ceased my laboured reasoning, struggled to my feet, and, standing over

"Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?

Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had

"But how can we escape?" he asked, suddenly. "They are invulnerable, they are pitiless."

"Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other," I answered. "And the mightier they are the more sane and wary

"I saw it happen." I proceeded to tell him. "We have chanced to come in for the thick of it," said I, "and that

I told him it was the heliograph signallingthat it was the sign of human help and effort in the sky.

"We are in the midst of it," I said, "quiet as it is. That flicker in the sky tells of the gathering storm. Yonder, I

take it are the Martians, and Londonward, where those hills rise about Richmond and Kingston and the trees

give cover, earthworks are being thrown up and guns are being placed. Presently the Martians will be coming

From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance of distant guns and a remote weird

crying. Then everything was still. A cockchafer came droning over the hedge and past us. High in the west

the crescent moon hung faint and pale above the smoke of Weybridge and Shepperton and the hot, still

My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking. He was a medical student working for

an imminent examination, and he heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers on

Saturday contained, in addition to lengthy special articles on the planet Mars, on life in the planets, and so

forth, a brief and vaguely worded telegram, all the more striking for its brevity.

The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number of people with a quickfiring gun, so

the story ran. The telegram concluded with the words: "Formidable as they seem to be, the Martians have not

moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, indeed, seem incapable of doing so. Probably this is due

to the relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." On that last text their leaderwriter expanded very

Of course all the students in the crammer's biology class, to which my brother went that day, were intensely

interested, but there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets. The afternoon papers puffed

scraps of news under big headlines. They had nothing to tell beyond the movements of troops about the

common, and the burning of the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight. Then the ST.

JAMES'S GAZETTE, in an extraspecial edition, announced the bare fact of the interruption of telegraphic

communication. This was thought to be due to the falling of burning pine trees across the line. Nothing more

of the fighting was known that night, the night of my drive to Leatherhead and back.

My brother felt no anxiety about us, as he knew from the description in the papers that the cylinder was a

good two miles from my house. He made up his mind to run down that night to me, in order, as he says, to

see the Things before they were killed. He despatched a telegram, which never reached me, about four

In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my brother reached Waterloo in a cab. On

the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an accident

prevented trains from reaching Woking that night. The nature of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed,

the railway authorities did not clearly know at that time. There was very little excitement in the station, as the

officials, failing to realise that anything further than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction had

occurred, were running the theatre trains which usually passed through Woking round by Virginia Water or

Guildford. They were busy making the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the Southampton and

Portsmouth Sunday League excursions. A nocturnal newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic

manager, to whom he bears a slight resemblance, waylaid and tried to interview him. Few people, excepting

I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning "all London was electrified by the

news from Woking." As a matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant phrase. Plenty of

Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning. Those who did took some time to

realise all that the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed. The majority of people in

The habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the Londoner's mind, and startling intelligence

so much a matter of course in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors: "About seven

o'clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder, and, moving about under an armour of metallic

shields, have completely wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an entire battalion

of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. Maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour;

the field guns have been disabled by them. Flying hussars have been galloping into Chertsey. The Martians

appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or Windsor. Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and

earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonward." That was how the Sunday SUN put it,

and a clever and remarkably prompt "handbook" article in the REFEREE compared the affair to a menagerie

No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured Martians, and there was still a fixed idea

that these monsters must be sluggish: "crawling," "creeping painfully" such expressions occurred in almost

all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have been written by an eyewitness of their advance. The

Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of it. But there

was practically nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press

agencies the news in their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and Weybridge, and all the

My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had happened

on the previous night. There he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace. Coming

out, he bought a REFEREE. He became alarmed at the news in this, and went again to Waterloo station to

find out if communication were restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable people walking

in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the strange intelligence that the news venders were

disseminating. People were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only on account of the local residents. At the

station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. The porters told

him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations,

but that these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise detail out of them.

"There's fighting going on about Weybridge" was the extent of their information.

The train service was now very much disorganised. Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends

from places on the SouthWestern network were standing about the station. One greyheaded old gentleman

came and abused the SouthWestern Company bitterly to my brother. "It wants showing up," he said.

One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, containing people 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 blue and white blazer

"There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables and all

that," he said. "They come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been guns heard at

Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once because the Martians are

coming. We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder. What the dickens

Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the clients of the underground railway, and

that the Sunday excursionists began to return from all over the SouthWestern "lung"Barnes, Wimbledon,

Richmond Park, Kew, and so forthat unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague

About five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely excited by the opening of the line of

communication, which is almost invariably closed, between the SouthEastern and the SouthWestern

stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with soldiers. These

were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an exchange

of pleasantries: "You'll get eaten!" "We're the beasttamers!" and so forth. A little while after that a squad of

police came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother went out into the

The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down

Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting

down the stream in patches. The sun was just setting, and the Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose

against one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse

stripes of reddishpurple cloud. There was talk of a floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he said

In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just been rushed out of Fleet Street

with stillwet newspapers and staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other down

Wellington Street. "Fight ing at Weybridge! Full description! Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!"

Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full power and terror of these monsters. He

learned that they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds swaying

vast mechanical bodies; and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even the mightiest

They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an

express train, and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had been

planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district and London. Five

of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been destroyed.

In the other cases the shells had missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the HeatRays.

Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the despatch was optimistic.

The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They had retreated to their triangle of cylinders

again, in the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all

sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich even from the north;

among others, long wireguns of ninetyfive tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen were

in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a

Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high explosives, which were being

rapidly manufactured and distributed. No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the strangest and gravest

description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were strange

and terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our

The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders, that at the outside there could not be

more than five in each cylinderfifteen altogether. And one at least was disposed ofperhaps more. The

public would be fairly warned of the approach of danger, and elaborate measures were being taken for the

protection of the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs. And so, with reiterated assurances of the

safety of London and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasiproclamation closed.

This was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still wet, and there had been no time to add a

word of comment. It was curious, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had

All down Wellington Street people could be seen fluttering out the pink sheets and reading, and the Strand

was suddenly noisy with the voices of an army of hawkers following these pioneers. Men came scrambling

off buses to secure copies. Certainly this news excited people intensely, whatever their previous apathy. The

shutters of a map shop in the Strand were being taken down, my brother said, and a man in his Sunday

raiment, lemonyellow gloves even, was visible inside the window hastily fastening maps of Surrey to the

Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his hand, my brother saw some of the fugitives

from West Surrey. There was a man with his wife and two boys and some articles of furniture in a cart such

as greengrocers use. He was driving from the direction of Westminster Bridge; and close behind him came a

hay waggon with five or six respectablelooking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. The faces of these

people were haggard, and their entire appearance contrasted conspicuously with the Sabbathbest appearance

of the people on the omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs. They stopped at

the Square as if undecided which way to take, and finally turned eastward along the Strand. Some way behind

these came a man in workday clothes, riding one of those oldfashioned tricycles with a small front wheel. He

My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such people. He had a vague idea that he

might see something of me. He noticed an unusual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of the

refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses. One was professing to have seen the

Martians. "Boilers on stilts, I tell you, striding along like men." Most of them were excited and animated by

Beyond Victoria the publichouses were doing a lively trade with these arrivals. At all the street corners

groups of people were reading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors. They

seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on

a Derby Day. My brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory answers from most.

None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who assured him that Woking had been

"I come from Byfleet," he said; "man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning, and ran from

door to door warning us to come away. Then came soldiers. We went out to look, and there were clouds of

smoke to the south nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming that way. Then we heard the guns at

Chertsey, and folks coming from Weybridge. So I've locked up my house and come on."

At the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to

About eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all over the south of London. My brother

could not hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet back streets to the

He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent' s Park, about two. He was now very anxious on

my account, and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run, even as

mine had run on Saturday, on military details. He thought of all those silent, expectant guns, of the suddenly

nomadic countryside; he tried to imagine "boilers on stilts" a hundred feet high.

There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford Street, and several in the Marylebone

Road, but so slowly was the news spreading that Regent Street and Portland Place were full of their usual

Sundaynight promenaders, albeit they talked in groups, and along the edge of Regent's Park there were as

many silent couples "walking out" together under the scattered gas lamps as ever there had been. The night

was warm and still, and a little oppressive; the sound of guns continued intermittently, and after midnight

He read and reread the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me. He was restless, and after supper

prowled out again aimlessly. He returned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination notes. He

went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the

sound of door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells. Red reflections

danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone

His room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down the street there were a dozen echoes to the

noise of his window sash, and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. Enquiries were being shouted.

"They are coming!" bawled a policeman, hammering at the door; "the Martians are coming!" and hurried to

The sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street Barracks, and every church within

earshot was hard at work killing sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin. There was a noise of doors opening,

and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from darkness into yellow illumination.

Up the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly into noise at the corner, rising to a clattering

climax under the window, and dying away slowly in the distance. Close on the rear of this came a couple of

cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of flying vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm station,

where the NorthWestern special trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into Euston.

For a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment, watching the policemen

hammering at door after door, and delivering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him

opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his

They both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear what the policemen were shouting. People

were coming out of the side streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking.

My brother answered him vaguely and began to dress, running with each garment to the window in order to

miss nothing of the growing excitement. And presently men selling unnaturally early newspapers came

"London in danger of suffocation! The Kingston and Richmond defences forced! Fearful massacres in the

And all about himin the rooms below, in the houses on each side and across the road, and behind in the

Park Terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne Park district

and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn and St. John's Wood and Hampstead, and eastward

in Shoreditch and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the vastness of London

from Ealing to East Hampeople were rubbing their eyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless

questions, dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the streets. It was the

dawn of the great panic. London, which had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert, was awakened,

Unable from his window to learn what was happening, my brother went down and out into the street, just as

the sky between the parapets of the houses grew pink with the early dawn. The flying people on foot and in

vehicles grew more numerous every moment. "Black Smoke!" he heard people crying, and again "Black

Smoke!" The contagion of such a unanimous fear was inevitable. As my brother hesitated on the doorstep,

he saw another news vender approaching, and got a paper forthwith. The man was running away with the

rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he rana grotesque mingling of profit and panic.

And from this paper my brother read that catastrophic despatch of the CommanderinChief:

"The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets.

They have smothered our batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are advancing

slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety

That was all, but it was enough. The whole population of the great sixmillion city was stirring, slipping,

The bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart carelessly driven smashed, amid shrieks

and curses, against the water trough up the street. Sickly yellow lights went to and fro in the houses, and

some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps. And overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear

He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him. His landlady came to

the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.

As my brother began to realise the import of all these things, he turned hastily to his own room, put all his

available moneysome ten pounds altogetherinto his pockets, and went out again into the streets.

It was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford,

and while my brother was watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the Martians had

resumed the offensive. So far as one can ascertain from the conflicting accounts that have been put forth, the

majority of them remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine that night, hurrying on some

But three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing slowly and cautiously, made their way

through Byfleet and Pyrford towards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant batteries

against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half

from his nearest fellow. They communicated with one another by means of sirenlike howls, running up and

It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George's Hill that we had heard at Upper

Halliford. The Ripley gunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a

position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted

village, while the Martian, without using his HeatRay, walked serenely over their guns, stepped gingerly

among them, passed in front of them, and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he

The St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a better mettle. Hidden by a pine wood as they

were, they seem to have been quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their guns as

deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a thousand yards' range.

The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody

yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a prolonged

ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It

would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The whole of the second volley

flew wide of the Martian on the ground, and, simultaneously, both his companions brought their HeatRays to

bear on the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about the guns flashed into fire, and only one

After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts who were watching

them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who had been

overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a

speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl

It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other Martians, each

carrying a thick black tube. A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the seven proceeded to

distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and the

A dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they began to move, and warned the waiting

batteries about Ditton and Esher. At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly armed with

tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against the western sky, came into sight of myself and the

curate as we hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward out of Halliford. They moved,

as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a milky mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height.

At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began running; but I knew it was no good running from

a Martian, and I turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles and brambles into the broad ditch by the side

The two halted, the nearer to us standing and facing Sunbury, the remoter being a grey indistinctness towards

The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up their positions in the huge crescent about

their cylinders in absolute silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. Never since the

devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would

have had precisely the same effectthe Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only

as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St. George's

But facing that crescent everywhereat Staines, Hounslow, Ditton, Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods

south of the river, and across the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees or village

houses gave sufficient coverthe guns were waiting. The signal rockets burst and rained their sparks

through the night and vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a tense expectation. The

Martians had but to advance into the line of fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those

guns glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a thunderous fury of battle.

No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in

mine, was the riddlehow much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were

organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our

shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a

disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they

needed.) A hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that vast sentinel shape. And

in the back of my mind was the sense of all the huge unknown and hidden forces Londonward. Had they

prepared pitfalls? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare? Would the Londoners have the heart

Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and peering through the hedge, came a sound

like the distant concussion of a gun. Another nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside us raised

his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy report that made the ground heave. The one

towards Staines answered him. There was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation.

I was so excited by these heavy minuteguns following one another that I so far forgot my personal safety

and my scalded hands as to clamber up into the hedge and stare towards Sunbury. As I did so a second report

followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards Hounslow. I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or

some such evidence of its work. But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with one solitary star, and the

white mist spreading wide and low beneath. And there had been no crash, no answering explosion. The

A bat flickered by and vanished. A distant tumult of shouting began and ceased. I looked again at the

Martian, and saw he was now moving eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion,

Every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring upon him; but the evening calm was

unbroken. The figure of the Martian grew smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering

night had swallowed him up. By a common impulse we clambered higher. Towards Sunbury was a dark

appearance, as though a conical hill had suddenly come into being there, hiding our view of the farther

country; and then, remoter across the river, over Walton, we saw another such summit. These hilllike forms

Moved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I perceived a third of these cloudy black kopjes

Everything had suddenly become very still. Far away to the southeast, marking the quiet, we heard the

Martians hooting to one another, and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of their guns. But the

Now at the time we could not understand these things, but later I was to learn the meaning of these ominous

kopjes that gathered in the twilight. Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have described, had

discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of

houses, or other possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. Some fired only one of these, some

twoas in the case of the one we had seen; the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at

that time. These canisters smashed on striking the groundthey did not explodeand incontinently

disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony

cumulus cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. And the touch

of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.

It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that, after the first tumultuous uprush and

outflow of its impact, it sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than

gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have

heard the carbonicacid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And where it came upon water

some chemical action occurred, and the surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank

slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a strange thing, seeing the

instant effect of the gas, that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The

vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of

the land and driving reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of

the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust. Save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in

the blue of the spectrum is concerned, we are still entirely ignorant of the nature of this substance.

Once the tumultuous upheaval of its dispersion was over, the black smoke clung so closely to the ground,

even before its precipitation, that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high houses and on

great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison altogether, as was proved even that night at Street

The man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the strangeness of its coiling flow, and

how he looked down from the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of its inky

nothingness. For a day and a half he remained there, weary, starving and sunscorched, the earth under the

blue sky and against the prospect of the distant hills a velvetblack expanse, with red roofs, green trees, and,

later, blackveiled shrubs and gates, barns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight.

But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to remain until it sank of its own accord

into the ground. As a rule the Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it again by wading

This they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the starlight from the window of a deserted house

at Upper Halliford, whither we had returned. From there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and

Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the windows rattled, and we heard the sound of the huge

siege guns that had been put in position there. These continued intermittently for the space of a quarter of an

hour, sending chance shots at the invisible Martians at Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of the

Then the fourth cylinder fella brilliant green meteoras I learned afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the

guns on the Richmond and Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far away in the

southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard before the black vapour could overwhelm the

So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps' nest, the Martians spread this strange

stifling vapour over the Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, until at last they

formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. All night through their destructive tubes advanced.

Never once, after the Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give the artillery the ghost of a

chance against them. Wherever there was a possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of

the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly displayed the HeatRay was brought to

By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and the glare of Kingston Hill threw their

light upon a network of black smoke, blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as far as the

eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly waded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way

They were sparing of the HeatRay that night, either because they had but a limited supply of material for its

production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the opposition

they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised

opposition to their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the

enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedoboats and destroyers that had brought their quickfirers up the

Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men ventured upon

after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and

One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the

twilight. Survivors there were none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert and watchful,

the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the

groups of civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening stillness, the ambulances

and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the

Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the

One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that

blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange

and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running,

shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on

the ground, and the swift broadeningout of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction

Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of Richmond, and the disintegrating organism

of government was, with a last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight.

So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Monday

was dawningthe stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round the railway

stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available

channel northward and eastward. By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by midday even the railway

organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that

All the railway lines north of the Thames and the SouthEastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by

midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for standingroom in the

carriages even at two o'clock. By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a

couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the

policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the

And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused to return to London, the pressure of the

flight drove the people in an everthickening multitude away from the stations and along the

northwardrunning roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes, and a cloud of slowly sinking black

vapour drove along the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in its

sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill,

After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a NorthWestern train at Chalk Farmthe engines of the trains that

had loaded in the goods yard there PLOUGHED through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men fought

to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnacemy brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm

road, dodged across through a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost in the sack of a

cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got

up and off, notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep foot of Haverstock Hill was

impassable owing to several overturned horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.

So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware Road, reached Edgware about seven, fasting

and wearied, but well ahead of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway, curious,

wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some horsemen, and two motor cars. A mile from

Edgware the rim of the wheel broke, and the machine became unridable. He left it by the roadside and

trudged through the village. There were shops half opened in the main street of the place, and people crowded

on the pavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of

For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The flying people increased in number.

Many of them, like my brother, seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh news of the

At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested. Most of the fugitives at that hour were

mounted on cycles, but there were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and the dust

It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where some friends of his lived, that at last

induced my brother to strike into a quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a stile, and, crossing

it, followed a footpath northeastward. He passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names

he did not learn. He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High Barnet, he happened upon two

ladies who became his fellow travellers. He came upon them just in time to save them.

He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of

the little ponychaise in which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the frightened pony's

head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender

figure, slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand.

My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried towards the struggle. One of the men

desisted and turned towards him, and my brother, realising from his antagonist' s face that a fight was

unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and sent him down against the wheel of the

It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the

man who pulled at the slender lady's arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung across his face, a third

antagonist struck him between the eyes, and the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the

Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the horse's head, and became aware of the

chaise receding from him down the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking back.

The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he stopped him with a blow in the face. Then, realising

that he was deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, with the sturdy man close

Suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong, and he rose to his feet to find himself

with a couple of antagonists again. He would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady

very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. It seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been

under the seat when she and her companion were attacked. She fired at six yards' distance, narrowly missing

my brother. The less courageous of the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his

cowardice. They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third man lay insensible.

She turned without a wordthey were both pantingand they went back to where the lady in white

The robbers had evidently had enough of it. When my brother looked again they were retreating.

"I'll sit here," said my brother, "if I may"; and he got upon the empty front seat. The lady looked over her

"Give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's side. In another moment a bend in the road

So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained

He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore, who had come in the

small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian

advance. He had hurried home, roused the womentheir servant had left them two days beforepacked

some provisions, put his revolver under the seatluckily for my brotherand told them to drive on to

Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. He stopped behind to tell the neighbours. He would overtake

them, he said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of

him. They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come

That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again, nearer to New

Barnet. He promised to stay with them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the missing

man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the revolvera weapon strange to himin order to

They made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became happy in the hedge. He told them of

his own escape out of London, and all that he knew of these Martians and their ways. The sun crept higher in

the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an uneasy state of anticipation. Several

wayfarers came along the lane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. Every broken answer

he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of

the immediate necessity for prosecuting this flight. He urged the matter upon them.

She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a fivepound note, and suggested that

with that they might get upon a train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was hopeless,

seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains, and broached his own idea of striking across Essex

Mrs. Elphinstonethat was the name of the woman in whitewould listen to no reasoning, and kept calling

upon "George"; but her sisterinlaw was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my

brother's suggestion. So, designing to cross the Great North Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother

As the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew

burning and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust. And as they

They began to meet more people. For the most part these were staring before them, murmuring indistinct

questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground.

They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating

invisible things. His paroxysm of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.

As my brother's party went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet they saw a woman approaching

the road across some fields on their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then passed a man

in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of

the lane, from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high road, came a little cart drawn

by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. There were three girls,

"This'll tike us rahnd Edgware?" asked the driver, wildeyed, whitefaced; and when my brother told him it

would if he turned to the left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.

My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them, and veiling the white

facade of a terrace beyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. Elphinstone suddenly

cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the

hot, blue sky. The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride

of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs. The lane came round sharply not fifty

For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human beings rushing northward, one pressing

on another. A great bank of dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything within twenty

feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of

horses and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every description.

It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road; the crowd

roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa was burning

and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion.

Two men came past them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and weeping. A lost retriever dog,

with hanging tongue, circled dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother's threat.

So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream

of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew

into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a

One man's hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the pony's head. Irresistibly attracted,

Edgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a riotous tumult, but this was a whole population in

movement. It is hard to imagine that host. It had no character of its own. The figures poured out past the

corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the lane. Along the margin came those who were on foot

threatened by the wheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another.

The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little way for those swifter and more

impatient vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so,

In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army, gesticulating with his crooked fingers

and bawling, "Eternity! Eternity!" His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long

after he was lost to sight in the dust. Some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their

horses and quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at nothing with miserable eyes; some

gnawed their hands with thirst, or lay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances. The horses" bits were

There were cabs, carriages, shop cars, waggons, beyond counting; a mail cart, a roadcleaner's cart marked

"Vestry of St. Pancras," a huge timber waggon crowded with roughs. A brewer's dray rumbled by with its two

There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their

dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men,

sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary

street outcast in faded black rags, wideeyed, loudvoiced, and foulmouthed. There were sturdy workmen

thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically;

a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in

But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. There were fear and pain on

their faces, and fear behind them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host

of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised

for a moment into renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude. Their

skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various

cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were hoarse

Few stopped and came aside from that flood. The lane opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow

opening, and had a delusive appearance of coming from the direction of London. Yet a kind of eddy of

people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for the most part rested but a moment

before plunging into it again. A little way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay a man with a

A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside

the trap, removed his boothis sock was bloodstainedshook out a pebble, and hobbled on again; and

then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping.

My brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to

Miss Elphinstone. So soon as my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened.

"Ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her voice"Ellen!" And the child suddenly darted

"Out of the way, there!" bawled a coachman, towering high; and my brother saw a closed carriage turning

The people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse. My brother pushed the pony and chaise back into

the hedge, and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way. It was a carriage, with a pole for a pair of

horses, but only one was in the traces. My brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out

something on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge.

"Where is there any water?" he said. "He is dying fast, and very thirsty. It is Lord Garrick."

"There may be a tap," said my brother, "in some of the houses. We have no water. I dare not leave my

Then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded, eaglefaced man lugging a small handbag, which

split even as my brother's eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into

separate coins as it struck the ground. They rolled hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and

horses. The man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent

him reeling. He gave a shriek and dodged back, and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly.

So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began

thrusting handfuls in his pocket. A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had

"Stop!" screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, tried to clutch the bit of the horse.

Before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw through the dust the rim passing over

the poor wretch's back. The driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round behind the cart.

The multitudinous shouting confused his ears. The man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money,

unable to rise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp and dead. My brother stood up

and yelled at the next driver, and a man on a black horse came to his assistance.

"Get him out of the road," said he; and, clutching the man's collar with his free hand, my brother lugged him

sideways. But he still clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering at his arm with

There was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped. My

brother looked up, and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar.

There was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it. A

hoof missed my brother's foot by a hair's breadth. He released his grip on the fallen man and jumped back. He

saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and

my brother was borne backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, and had to fight hard in the torrent

He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with all a child's want of sympathetic

imagination, staring with dilated eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed under

the rolling wheels. "Let us go back!" he shouted, and began turning the pony round. "We cannot cross

thishell," he said and they went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was

hidden. As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the

privet, deadly white and drawn, and shining with perspiration. The two women sat silent, crouching in their

Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was white and pale, and her sisterinlaw

sat weeping, too wretched even to call upon "George." My brother was horrified and perplexed. So soon as

they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing. He turned to Miss

For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force their way into the torrent of people, my

brother plunged into the traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its head. A

waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter from the chaise. In another moment they were

caught and swept forward by the stream. My brother, with the cabman's whip marks red across his face and

"Point the revolver at the man behind," he said, giving it to her, "if he presses us too hard. No!point it at

Then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across the road. But once in the stream he

seemed to lose volition, to become a part of that dusty rout. They swept through Chipping Barnet with the

torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before they had fought across to the opposite

side of the way. It was din and confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the town the road forks repeatedly,

They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of the road, and at another place farther on

they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at the water. And

farther on, from a lull near East Barnet, they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal

or ordertrains swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the enginesgoing

northward along the Great Northern Railway. My brother supposes they must have filled outside London, for

at that time the furious terror of the people had rendered the central termini impossible.

Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the violence of the day had already utterly

exhausted all three of them. They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and none of

them dared to sleep. And in the evening many people came hurrying along the road nearby their stopping

place, fleeing from unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my brother had

Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of

London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road through Barnet, but

also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and

south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that June

morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the

tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human

agony of terror and physical distress. I have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of the

road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots

appeared to one of those concerned. Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human

beings moved and suffered together. The legendary hosts of Goths and Huns, the hugest armies Asia has ever

seen, would have been but a drop in that current. And this was no disciplined march; it was a stampedea

stampede gigantic and terriblewithout order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and

unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.

Directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide, houses, churches,

squares, crescents, gardensalready derelictspread out like a huge map, and in the southward BLOTTED.

Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the

chart. Steadily, incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out ramifications this way and that,

now banking itself against rising ground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a newfound valley, exactly

And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the glittering Martians went to and fro,

calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that, laying it

again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose, and taking possession of the conquered country.

They do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction

of any opposition. They exploded any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the

railways here and there. They were hamstringing mankind. They seemed in no hurry to extend the field of

their operations, and did not come beyond the central part of London all that day. It is possible that a very

considerable number of people in London stuck to their houses through Monday morning. Certain it is that

Until about midday the Pool of London was an astonishing scene. Steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay

there, tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many who swam out to

these vessels were thrust off with boathooks and drowned. About one o'clock in the afternoon the thinning

remnant of a cloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge. At that the Pool

became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges

jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against

the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront. People were actually clambering down the piers of

When, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and waded down the river, nothing but

Of the falling of the fifth cylinder I have presently to tell. The sixth star fell at Wimbledon. My brother,

keeping watch beside the women in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills. On

Tuesday the little party, still set upon getting across the sea, made its way through the swarming country

towards Colchester. The news that the Martians were now in possession of the whole of London was

confirmed. They had been seen at Highgate, and even, it was said, at Neasden. But they did not come into my

That day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need of provisions. As they grew hungry the

rights of property ceased to be regarded. Farmers were out to defend their cattlesheds, granaries, and

ripening root crops with arms in their hands. A number of people now, like my brother, had their faces

eastward, and there were some desperate souls even going back towards London to get food. These were

chiefly people from the northern suburbs, whose knowledge of the Black Smoke came by hearsay. He heard

that about half the members of the government had gathered at Birmingham, and that enormous quantities of

high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines across the Midland counties.

He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the desertions of the first day's panic, had

resumed traffic, and was running northward trains from St. Albans to relieve the congestion of the home

counties. There was also a placard in Chipping Ongar announcing that large stores of flour were available in

the northern towns and that within twentyfour hours bread would be distributed among the starving people

in the neighbourhood. But this intelligence did not deter him from the plan of escape he had formed, and the

three pressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution than this promise. Nor, as a matter

of fact, did anyone else hear more of it. That night fell the seventh star, falling upon Primrose Hill. It fell

while Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that duty alternately with my brother. She saw it.

On Wednesday the three fugitivesthey had passed the night in a field of unripe wheatreached

Chelmsford, and there a body of the inhabitants, calling itself the Committee of Public Supply, seized the

pony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share in it the next day.

Here there were rumours of Martians at Epping, and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey Powder

People were watching for Martians here from the church towers. My brother, very luckily for him as it

chanced, preferred to push on at once to the coast rather than wait for food, although all three of them were

very hungry. By midday they passed through Tillingham, which, strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent

and deserted, save for a few furtive plunderers hunting for food. Near Tillingham they suddenly came in sight

of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine.

For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and

Walton and Clacton, and afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people. They lay in a huge

sickleshaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the Naze. Close inshore was a multitude of fishing

smacksEnglish, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts, electric

boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships,

passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white and grey liners from

Southampton and Hamburg; and along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly

a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also extended up the

About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a

waterlogged ship. This was the ram THUNDER CHILD. It was the only warship in sight, but far away to the

right over the smooth surface of the seafor that day there was a dead calmlay a serpent of black smoke

to mark the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and ready for

action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to

At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sisterinlaw, gave way to panic.

She had never been out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign

country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove

very similar. She had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two days'

journeyings. Her great idea was to return to Stanmore. Things had been always well and safe at Stanmore.

It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the beach, where presently my brother

succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a boat and

drove a bargain for thirtysix pounds for the three. The steamer was going, these men said, to Ostend.

It was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares at the gangway, found himself safely

aboard the steamboat with his charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the three of

There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom had expended their last money in

securing a passage, but the captain lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up passengers

until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He would probably have remained longer had it not

been for the sound of guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the ironclad seaward fired

a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels.

Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it

was growing louder. At the same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three ironclads

rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of black smoke. But my brother's attention speedily

reverted to the distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey

The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping, and the low Essex

coast was growing blue and hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, advancing

along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his

voice with fear and anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his terror. Every soul

aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the

trees or church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride.

It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed than terrified, watching this Titan

advancing deliberately towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell away.

Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still

farther off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky.

They were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded

between Foulness and the Naze. In spite of the throbbing exertions of the engines of the little paddleboat, and

the pouring foam that her wheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying slowness from this ominous

Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the

approaching terror; one ship passing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on,

steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let out, launches rushing hither and thither.

He was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything

seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she had suddenly come round to avoid being run

down) flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing. There was a shouting all about him, a

trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over

He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast

iron bulk like the blade of a plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam

that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down

A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had

passed and was rushing landward. Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin

funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the torpedo ram, THUNDER CHILD,

Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging

leviathan at the Martians again, and he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to

sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective,

they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so

helplessly. It would seem they were regarding this new antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence, it

may be, the giant was even such another as themselves. The THUNDER CHILD fired no gun, but simply

drove full speed towards them. It was probably her not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she

did. They did not know what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent her to the bottom forthwith

She was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the

Martians a diminishing black bulk against the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast.

Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It

hit her larboard side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of Black

Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear. To the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the

They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward, and one of

them raised the cameralike generator of the HeatRay. He held it pointing obliquely downward, and a bank

of steam sprang from the water at its touch. It must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a

A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the Martian reeled and staggered. In another

moment he was cut down, and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air. The guns of the

THUNDER CHILD sounded through the reek, going off one after the other, and one shot splashed the water

high close by the steamer, ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a smack to

But no one heeded that very much. At the sight of the Martian's collapse the captain on the bridge yelled

inarticulately, and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together. And then they yelled

again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove something long and black, the flames streaming from

She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working. She headed straight for a

second Martian, and was within a hundred yards of him when the HeatRay came to bear. Then with a

violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped upward. The Martian staggered with the violence

of her explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the impetus of its

pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily. A

Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer from end to end rang with frantic cheering that was taken up first

by one and then by all in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea.

The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third Martian and the coast altogether. And all

this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last the confusion

cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened, and nothing of the THUNDER CHILD could be made

out, nor could the third Martian be seen. But the ironclads to seaward were now quite close and standing in

The little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the ironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which

was hidden still by a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and combining in the

strangest way. The fleet of refugees was scattering to the northeast; several smacks were sailing between the

ironclads and the steamboat. After a time, and before they reached the sinking cloud bank, the warships

turned northward, and then abruptly went about and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward.

The coast grew faint, and at last indistinguishable amid the low banks of clouds that were gathering about the

Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns, and a form of black shadows

moving. Everyone struggled to the rail of the steamer and peered into the blinding furnace of the west, but

nothing was to be distinguished clearly. A mass of smoke rose slanting and barred the face of the sun. The

The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the evening star trembled into sight. It was deep

twilight when the captain cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something rushed up into the

sky out of the greynessrushed slantingly upward and very swiftly into the luminous clearness above the

clouds in the western sky; something flat and broad, and very large, that swept round in a vast curve, grew

smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again into the grey mystery of the night. And as it flew it rained down

In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother

that all through the last two chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at Halliford

whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will resume. We stopped there all Sunday night and all

the next daythe day of the panicin a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black Smoke from the rest of

the world. We could do nothing but wait in aching inactivity during those two weary days.

My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning

me already as a dead man. I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off from her,

of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin I knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he

was not the sort of man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now was not bravery,

but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe that the Martians were moving Londonward and

away from her. Such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew very weary and irritable

with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I tired of the sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual

remonstrance I kept away from him, staying in a roomevidently a children's schoolroomcontaining

globes, forms, and copybooks. When he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house

We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and the morning of the next. There were

signs of people in the next house on Sunday eveninga face at a window and moving lights, and later the

slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were, nor what became of them. We saw nothing of

them next day. The Black Smoke drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer and

A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a jet of superheated steam that hissed

against the walls, smashed all the windows it touched, and scalded the curate's hand as he fled out of the front

room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms and looked out again, the country northward was as

though a black snowstorm had passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were astonished to see an

For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, save that we were relieved of our fear of the

Black Smoke. But later I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get away. So soon

as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream of action returned. But the curate was lethargic,

I resolved to leave himwould that I had! Wiser now for the artilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and

drink. I had found oil and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I found in one of the

bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I meant to go alonehad reconciled myself to going alonehe

suddenly roused himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started about five o'clock,

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well as

men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery powder made me

think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii. We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our

minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a

patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to

and fro under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton, and so we

Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still afire. Twickenham was uninjured by

either HeatRay or Black Smoke, and there were more people about here, though none could give us news.

For the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull to shift their quarters. I have an

impression that many of the houses here were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even for

flight. Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along the road. I remember most vividly three

smashed bicycles in a heap, pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. We crossed Richmond

Bridge about half past eight. We hurried across the exposed bridge, of course, but I noticed floating down the

stream a number of red masses, some many feet across. I did not know what these werethere was no time

for scrutinyand I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again on the Surrey

side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodiesa heap near the approach to the station; but

We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a side street towards the river, but

otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of Richmond

Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks of a Martian

fightingmachine loomed in sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at

our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have perished. We were so terrified that

we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping

But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out again. I

went through a shrubbery, and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so

emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the shed, but he came hurrying after me.

That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it was manifest the Martians were about us. No

sooner had the curate overtaken me than we saw either the fightingmachine we had seen before or another,

far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew Lodge. Four or five little black figures hurried before it

across the greengrey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian pursued them. In three strides

he was among them, and they ran radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no HeatRay to destroy

them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed them into the great metallic carrier which

It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any other purpose than destruction with defeated

humanity. We stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled

garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other

I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock before we gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing into the

road, but sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the darkness, he

on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon

a scorched and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered dead bodies of men, burned

horribly about the heads and trunks but with their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet,

Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and deserted. Here we happened on no

dead, though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my companion

suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one of the houses.

The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the window, was a small semidetached villa, and I

found nothing eatable left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water to drink; and I

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house within a

walled garden, and in the pantry of this domicile we found a store of foodtwo loaves of bread in a pan, an

uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were

destined to subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two

bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of washup kitchen, and in this

was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and

We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the darkfor we dared not strike a lightand ate bread and ham, and

drank beer out of the same bottle. The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough,

for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when the thing happened that was to

"It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding glare of vivid green light. Everything in the

kitchen leaped out, clearly visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then followed such a

concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came

a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the plaster of the

ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong

across the floor against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long time, the curate told 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

For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things came to me slowly. A bruise on my

"Don't move," he said. "The floor is covered with smashed crockery from the dresser. You can't possibly

We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other breathing. Everything seemed deadly still,

but once something near us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound. Outside and

"It was not like the HeatRay," I said, and for a time I was inclined to think one of the great

fightingmachines had stumbled against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton

Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or four hours, until the dawn came, we

scarcely moved. And then the light filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through a

triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the wall behind us. The interior of the

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed over the table upon which we had

been sitting and lay about our feet. Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the

window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered with smashed hardware; the end of

the kitchen towards the house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the

greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the

fashion, pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating blue and

white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range.

As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body of a Martian, standing sentinel, I

suppose, over the still glowing cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible out of

"The fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars, has struck this house and buried us under the

Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes

fixed on the faint light of the kitchen door. I could just see the curate's face, a dim, oval shape, and his collar

and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet

interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for the most part problematical, continued

intermittently, and seemed if anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured thudding

and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and

continued. Once the light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely dark. For many

hours we must have crouched there, silent and shivering, until our tired attention failed. . . .

At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater

portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger was at a stride so insistent that 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 no answer, but so

soon as I began eating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me.

After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have dozed again, for when presently I looked

round I was alone. The thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered for the curate

several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him

across the room, lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the Martians. His shoulders were

I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed; and the place rocked with that beating

thud. Through the aperture in the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm blue of a

tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I remained watching the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and

I touched the curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass of plaster went sliding down outside and fell

with a loud impact. I gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we crouched motionless.

Then I turned to see how much of our rampart remained. The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit

open in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was able to see out of this gap into what

had been overnight a quiet suburban roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.

The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the house we had first visited. The building had

vanished, completely smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder lay now far beneath the

original foundations deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking. The

earth all round it had splashed under that tremendous impact"splashed" is the only word and lay in

heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent

blow of a hammer. Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on the ground floor, had been

destroyed completely; by a chance the kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and

ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect we hung now on the

very edge of the great circular pit the Martians were engaged in making. The heavy beating sound was

evidently just behind us, and ever and again a bright green vapour drove up like a veil across our peephole.

The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed

and gravelheaped shrubbery, one of the great fightingmachines, deserted by its occupant, stood stiff and

tall against the evening sky. At first I scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been

convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy in the

excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped

The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one of those complicated fabrics that have

since been called handlingmachines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to

terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile

legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about its

body. Most of its arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods,

plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it

extracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.

Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic

glitter. The fightingmachines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch, but nothing to

compare with this. People who have never seen these structures, and have only the illimagined efforts of

artists or the imperfect descriptions of such eyewitnesses as myself to go upon, scarcely realise that living

I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The

artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fightingmachines, and there his knowledge ended. He

presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading

monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them

here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They were no more like the

Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been

At first, I say, the handlingmachine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike creature with a

glittering integument, the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements seeming to be

simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion. But then I perceived the resemblance of its greybrown,

shiny, leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true nature of this dexterous

workman dawned upon me. With that realisation my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real

Martians. Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea no longer obscured my

observation. Moreover, I was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action.

They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They were huge round

bodiesor, rather, headsabout four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had

no nostrilsindeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large

darkcoloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or bodyI scarcely

know how to speak of itwas the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear,

though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender,

almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named

rather aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the HANDS. Even as I saw these Martians for

the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the

increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they

The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost equally simple. The

greater part of the structure was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.

Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary

distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in the

And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex

apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were

headsmerely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh,

living blood of other creatures, and INJECTED it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as

I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not

endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most

cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . .

The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should

remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.

The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous

waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies are half made up

of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning heterogeneous food into blood. The digestive processes

and their reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our minds. Men go happy or

miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers, or sound gastric glands. But the Martians were lifted

Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the

remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from

the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost

like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round,

erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each

cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to

And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place certain further details which, although

they were not all evident to us at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to form a

In three other points their physiology differed strangely from ours. Their organisms did not sleep, any more

than the heart of man sleeps. Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that periodical

extinction was unknown to them. They had little or no sense of fatigue, it would seem. On earth they could

never have moved without effort, yet even to the last they kept in action. In twentyfour hours they did

In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and

therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A young

Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth during the war, and it was found attached to

its parent, partially BUDDED off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the

In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of increase has disappeared; but even on this earth

it was certainly the primitive method. Among the lower animals, up even to those first cousins of the

vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes occur side by side, but finally the sexual method

superseded its competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has apparently been the case.

It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of quasiscientific repute, writing long before the

Martian invasion, did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian condition. His prophecy,

I remember, appeared in November or December, 1893, in a longdefunct publication, the PALL MALL

BUDGET, and I recall a caricature of it in a preMartian periodical called PUNCH. He pointed out

writing in a foolish, facetious tonethat the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede

limbs; the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and

chin were no longer essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in

the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages. The brain alone remained a cardinal

necessity. Only one other part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand, "teacher and

agent of the brain." While the rest of the body dwindled, the hands would grow larger.

There is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians we have beyond dispute the actual

accomplishment of such a suppression of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is quite

credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of

brain and hands (the latter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) at the expense of the rest

of the body. Without the body the brain would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of

The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed from ours was in what one might have

thought a very trivial particular. Microorganisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have

either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago. A hundred diseases,

all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never enter

the scheme of their life. And speaking of the differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may

Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid

bloodred tint. At any rate, the seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them

gave rise in all cases to redcoloured growths. Only that known popularly as the red weed, however, gained

any footing in competition with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a transitory growth, and few

people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance.

It spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its cactuslike branches

formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast

The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single round drum at the back of the

headbody, and eyes with a visual range not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, blue

and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that they communicated by sounds and tentacular

gesticulations; this is asserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written evidently by

someone not an eyewitness of Martian actions) to which I have already alluded, and which, so far, has been

the chief source of information concerning them. Now no surviving human being saw so much of the

Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I

watched them closely time after time, and that I have seen four, five, and (once) six of them sluggishly

performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without either sound or gesture. Their

peculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, I believe, in no sense a signal,

but merely the expiration of air preparatory to the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to at least an

elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I am convincedas firmly as I am convinced of

anythingthat the Martians interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. And I have been

convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions. Before the Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here

or there may remember, I had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory.

The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and decorum were necessarily different from

ours; and not only were they evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are, but changes

of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at all seriously. Yet though they wore no clothing, it was

in the other artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great superiority over man lay. We men,

with our bicycles and roadskates, our Lilienthal soaringmachines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are just

in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out. They have become practically mere

brains, wearing different bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle

in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. And of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man

than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism is

absentthe WHEEL is absent; among all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of

their use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in locomotion. And in this connection it is curious to

remark that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its

development. And not only did the Martians either not know of (which is incredible), or abstain from, the

wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot, with

circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the machinery present a

complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while

upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated

by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn

closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism

to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained. Such

quasimuscles abounded in the crablike handlingmachine which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I

watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in

the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.

While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and noting each strange detail of their form,

the curate reminded me of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned to a scowling face, and silent,

eloquent lips. He wanted the slit, which permitted only one of us to peep through; and so I had to forego

When I looked again, the busy handlingmachine had already put together several of the pieces of apparatus

it had taken out of the cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and down on the left

a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting jets of green vapour and working its way round

the pit, excavating and embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner. This it was which had caused

the regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped and

whistled as it worked. So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.

The arrival of a second fightingmachine drove us from our peephole into the scullery, for we feared that

from his elevation the Martian might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began to feel

less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank

blackness, but at first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery in heartthrobbing

retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger we incurred, the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible.

And I recall now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger in which we were between

starvation and a still more terrible death, we could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. We

would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and the dread of making a noise, and

The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits of thought and action, and our danger

and isolation only accentuated the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the curate's trick

of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind. His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I

made to think out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and intensified, almost to the verge of

craziness. He was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I verily

believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I

would sit in the darkness unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities. He ate more than I

did, and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance of life was to stop in the house until the Martians

had done with their pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we should need food. He

As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so intensified our distress and danger that I

had, much as I loathed doing it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him to reason for a

time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty

It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set them down that my story may lack nothing.

Those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of rage in our

final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to

tortured men. But those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to elemental things,

And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food and drink, and gripping

hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar

routine of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to those first new experiences of mine. After a long time I

ventured back to the peephole, to find that the newcomers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer

than three of the fightingmachines. These last had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an

orderly manner about the cylinder. The second handlingmachine was now completed, and was busied in

serving one of the novel contrivances the big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in

its general form, above which oscillated a pearshaped receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder

The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handlingmachine. With two spatulate

hands the handlingmachine was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pearshaped receptacle

above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from

the middle part of the machine. Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a ribbed

channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the mound of bluish dust. From this unseen

receiver a little thread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the handlingmachine,

with a faint and musical clinking, extended, telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a

mere blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In another second it had lifted a bar

of white aluminium into sight, untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a growing stack

of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made

more than a hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped

The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting

clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were

The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled

up, listening with all my ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that we were observed,

crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding down the rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness,

inarticulate, gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture suggested a resignation of the slit,

and after a little while my curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and clambered up to

it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and

faint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from the aluminiummaking. The

whole picture was a flickering scheme of 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 bluegreen powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fightingmachine, 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 fightingmachine 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 somethingsomething struggling

violentlywas 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, middleaged 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

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

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 fightingmachine seemed at first too great. And I should have had to

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

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

It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The Martians had taken away the

excavatingmachine, and, save for a fightingmachine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a

handlingmachine 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 handlingmachine and the bars and

patches of white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for the clinking of the handlingmachine,

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

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 seemedit

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 rainwater

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

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

On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and nothing I could do would moderate his

"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 follymy God, what folly! when I should have stood up, though I died

for it, and called upon them to repentrepent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy . . . ! The wine press of

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 voiceI prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on mehe 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 halfsane and always

frothy repentance for his vacant sham of God's service, such as made me pity him. Then he slept awhile, and

"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

"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

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

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 handlingmachine 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

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

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 splitring. Then a heavy

bodyI knew too well whatwas 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 handlingmachine, scrutinizing the curate's head. I thought at once that it would

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

nearerin the scullery, as I judged. I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. I prayed

copiously. It passed, scraping faintly across the cellar door. An age of almost intolerable suspense intervened;

then I heard it fumbling at the latch! It had found the door! The Martians understood doors!

In the darkness I could just see the thinglike an elephant' s trunk more than anything elsewaving

towards me and touching and examining the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black worm swaying

Once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. I was on the verge of screaming; I bit my hand. For a time the

tentacle was silent. I could have fancied it had been withdrawn. Presently, with an abrupt click, it gripped

somethingI thought it had me!and seemed to go out of the cellar again. For a minute I was not sure.

I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which had become cramped, and then listened. I

Then I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again. Slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching

While I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar door and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry,

and the biscuittins rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against the cellar door. Then

It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in the close darkness, buried among coals and

firewood, not daring even to crawl out for the drink for which I craved. It was the eleventh day before I

My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door between the kitchen and the scullery. But the

pantry was empty; every scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on the previous day.

At that discovery I despaired for the first time. I took no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the

At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the

scullery, in a state of despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had become deaf, for the

noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear from the pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong

On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of alarming the Martians, I attacked the

creaking rainwater pump that stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and tainted rain

water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the

During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much of the curate and of the manner of his

On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and thought disjointedly of eating and of vague

impossible plans of escape. Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the curate, or of

sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a keen pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light

that came into the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered imagination it seemed the colour of

On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had

grown right across the hole in the wall, turning the halflight of the place into a crimsoncoloured obscurity.

It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and,

listening, identified it as the snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a dog's nose

peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This greatly surprised me. At the scent of me he barked

I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him;

and in any case, it would be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the attention of the Martians.

I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly withdrew his head and disappeared.

I listenedI was not deafbut certainly the pit was still. I heard a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings,

For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move aside the red plants that obscured it. Once

or twice I heard a faint pitterpatter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the sand far below me,

and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.

Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over the skeletons of the dead the

I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery had gone. Save for the big mound of

greyishblue powder in one corner, certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the skeletons of

Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the mound of rubble. I could see in any

direction save behind me, to the north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The pit

dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish afforded a practicable slope to the summit of

I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently,

When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been a straggling street of comfortable white and

red houses, interspersed with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay, and

gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactusshaped plants, kneehigh, without a solitary terrestrial

growth to dispute their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but further a network of red thread

The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls stood, sometimes to

the second story, with smashed windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their

roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling for its refuse. A number of other birds

hopped about among the ruins. Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men

The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle

breeze kept the red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! the

For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety. Within that noisome den from which I

had emerged I had thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had not realised what

had been happening to the world, had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected

to see Sheen in ruins I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another planet.

For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we

dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by

the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that

presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a

persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it

would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away.

But so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my dominant motive became the hunger of

my long and dismal fast. In the direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a redcovered wall, a patch of

garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went kneedeep, and sometimes neckdeep, in the red

weed. The density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and

when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my feet to the crest. So I went along by the side of it,

and came to a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble into the garden I coveted.

Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which

I secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and crimson trees towards

Kew it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood dropspossessed with two ideas: to get

more food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed unearthly region of

Some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which also I devoured, and then I came upon

a brown sheet of flowing shallow water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served

only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer, but afterwards I

discovered that it was caused by the tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary growth

encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured

down into the water of the Wey and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water fronds speedily

At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the

Thames water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As

the water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in

this red swamp, whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the Martians had caused was

In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. A cankering disease, due, it is

believed, to the action of certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of natural selection, all

terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseasesthey never succumb without a

severe struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. The fronds became bleached, and then

shrivelled and brittle. They broke off at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth

My first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved

by an impulse, gnawed some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly, metallic taste. I

found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a

little; but the flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to Mortlake. I managed to make

out the road by means of occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out of this

spate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came out on Putney Common.

Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground

exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly undisturbed

spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed, as if they had been left for a day by the

owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less abundant; the tall trees along the lane

were free from the red creeper. I hunted for food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple

of silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked. I rested for the remainder of the

daylight in a shrubbery, being, in my enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on.

All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians. I encountered a couple of hungrylooking

dogs, but both hurried circuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton I had seen two

human skeletons not bodies, but skeletons, picked cleanand in the wood by me I found the crushed and

scattered bones of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed parts of these in my

After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where I think the HeatRay must have been used

for some reason. And in the garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes, sufficient to

stay my hunger. From this garden one looked down upon Putney and the river. The aspect of the place in the

dusk was singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and down the hill the sheets of the

flooded river, redtinged with the weed. And over allsilence. It filled me with indescribable terror to think

For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man

left alive. Hard by the top of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms dislocated and removed

several yards from the rest of the body. As I proceeded I became more and more convinced that the

extermination of mankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished in this part of the

world. The Martians, I thought, had gone on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps

even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone northward.

I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since

my flight to Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into that houseafterwards I

found the front door was on the latchnor how I ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of

despair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedroom, I found a ratgnawed crust and two tins of pineapple.

The place had been already searched and emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and

sandwiches that had been overlooked. The latter I could not eat, they were too rotten, but the former not only

stayed my hunger, but filled my pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating that part of

London for food in the night. Before I went to bed I had an interval of restlessness, and prowled from

window to window, peering out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I lay in bed I found myself

thinking consecutivelya thing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate.

During all the intervening time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional

states or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night my brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the food I had eaten,

Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of the curate, the whereabouts of the Martians,

and the possible fate of my wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; I saw it

simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse. I saw

myself then as I see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a sequence of

accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted

me. In the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of God that sometimes comes into the stillness

and the darkness, I stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I retraced every step of

our conversation from the moment when I had found him crouching beside me, heedless of my thirst, and

pointing to the fire and smoke that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We had been incapable of

cooperationgrim chance had taken no heed of that. Had I foreseen, I should have left him at Halliford.

But I did not foresee; and crime is to foresee and do. And I set this down as I have set all this story down, as

it was. There were no witnessesall these things I might have concealed. But I set it down, and the reader

And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate body, I faced the problem of the Martians

and the fate of my wife. For the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so, unhappily, I

could for the latter. And suddenly that night became terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the

dark. I found myself praying that the HeatRay might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being.

Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had

prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and

sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come,

I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding placea creature scarcely

larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed.

Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us

The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, and was fretted with little golden clouds.

In the road that runs from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the panic

torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night after the fighting began. There was a little

twowheeled cart inscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed

wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top

of West Hill a lot of bloodstained glass about the overturned water trough. My movements were languid,

my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of going to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest

chance of finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly, my cousins and she would

have fled thence; but it seemed to me I might find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled. I knew I

wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men, but I had no clear idea how the

finding might be done. I was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner I went, under

cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of Wimbledon Common, stretching wide and far.

That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there was no red weed to be seen, and as I

prowled, hesitating, on the verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I came upon

a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson

from their stout resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, I

beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes. I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, and it

rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached him slowly. He stood silent and motionless,

As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as

though he had been dragged through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches mixing with

the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark

and dirty and sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut across the lower part of his

"Stop!" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I stopped. His voice was hoarse. "Where do you

"I come from Mortlake," I said. "I was buried near the pit the Martians made about their cylinder. I have

"There is no food about here," he said. "This is my country. All this hill down to the river, and back to

Clapham, and up to the edge of the common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?"

"I don't know," I said. "I have been buried in the ruins of a house thirteen or fourteen days. I don't know what

"I've no wish to stop about here," said I. "I think I shall go to Leatherhead, for my wife was there."

"It is you," said he; "the man from Woking. And you weren't killed at Weybridge?"

"Good luck!" he said. "We are lucky ones! Fancy YOU!" He put out a hand, and I took it. "I crawled up a

drain," he said. "But they didn't kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards Walton across the

fields. But It's not sixteen days altogetherand your hair is grey." He looked over his shoulder

suddenly. "Only a rook," he said. "One gets to know that birds have shadows these days. This is a bit open.

"They've gone away across London," he said. "I guess they've got a bigger camp there. Of a night, all over

there, Hampstead way, the sky is alive with their lights. It's like a great city, and in the glare you can just see

them moving. By daylight you can't. But nearerI haven't seen them" (he counted on his fingers) "five

days. Then I saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the night before last"he

stopped and spoke impressively"it was just a matter of lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe

"It is all over with humanity," I said. "If they can do that they will simply go round the world."

"They will. But It will relieve things over here a bit. And besides" He looked at me. "Aren't you

I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this facta fact perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I

had still held a vague hope; rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated his words, "We're beat."

"It's all over," he said. "They've lost ONEjust ONE. And they've made their footing good and crippled the

greatest power in the world. They've walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an accident.

And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These green starsI've seen none these five or six days,

but I've no doubt they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're under! We're beat!"

I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise some countervailing thought.

"This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and

"After the tenth shot they fired no moreat least, until the first cylinder came."

"How do you know?" said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought. "Something wrong with the gun," he

said. "But what if there is? They'll get it right again. And even if there's a delay, how can it alter the end? It's

just men and ants. There's the ants builds their cities, live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men

want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we are nowjust ants. Only"

"That's what I've been thinking," he said; "that's what I've been thinking. After Weybridge I went

souththinking. I saw what was up. Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves.

But I'm not so fond of squealing. I've been in sight of death once or twice; I'm not an ornamental soldier, and

at the best and worst, death it's just death. And it's the man that keeps on thinking comes through. I saw

everyone tracking away south. Says I, "Food won't last this way," and I turned right back. I went for the

Martians like a sparrow goes for man. All round"he waved a hand to the horizon"they're starving in

"No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France," he said. He seemed to hesitate whether to

apologise, met my eyes, and went on: "There's food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines, spirits,

mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was telling you what I was thinking.

"Here's intelligent things," I said, "and it seems they want us for food. First, they'll smash us upships,

machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All that will go. If we were the size of ants we might

pull through. But we're not. It's all too bulky to stop. That's the first certainty." Eh?"

"It is; I've thought it out. Very well, thennext; at present we're caught as we're wanted. A Martian has only

to go a few miles to get a crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, picking houses to

pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they won't keep on doing that. So soon as they've settled all our

guns and ships, and smashed our railways, and done all the things they are doing over there, they will begin

catching us systematic, picking the best and storing us in cages and things. That's what they will start doing in

"Not begun. All that's happened so far is through our not having the sense to keep quietworrying them with

guns and such foolery. And losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn't any more safety

than where we were. They don't want to bother us yet. They're making their thingsmaking all the things

they couldn't bring with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very likely that's why the

cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing about blind,

on the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, we've got to fix ourselves up according to

the new state of affairs. That's how I figure it out. It isn't quite according to what a man wants for his species,

but it's about what the facts point to. And that's the principle I acted upon. Cities, nations, civilisation,

"There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so; there won't be any Royal Academy of

Arts, and no nice little feeds at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is up. If you've

got any drawingroom manners or a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck

"I mean that men like me are going on livingfor the sake of the breed. I tell you, I'm grim set on living.

And if I'm not mistaken, you'll show what insides YOU'VE got, too, before long. We aren't going to be

exterminated. And I don't mean to be caught either, and tamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox.

"I do. I'm going on, under their feet. I've got it planned; I've thought it out. We men are beat. We don't know

enough. We've got to learn before we've got a chance. And we've got to live and keep independent while we

"Great God!," cried I. "But you are a man indeed!" And suddenly I gripped his hand.

"Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I'm getting ready. Mind you, it isn't all of us

that are made for wild beasts; and that's what it's got to be. That's why I watched you. I had my doubts.

You're slender. I didn't know that it was you, you see, or just how you'd been buried. All thesethe sort of

people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that waythey'd be

no good. They haven't any spirit in themno proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or

the otherLord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to workI've seen

hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little seasonticket train, for

fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to

understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for

fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because

they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.

Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundaysfear of the hereafter. As if hell was

built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful

breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they'll come

and be caught cheerful. They'll be quite glad after a bit. They'll wonder what people did before there were

Martians to take care of them. And the bar loafers, and mashers, and singersI can imagine them. I can

imagine them," he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. "There'll be any amount of sentiment and religion

loose among them. There's hundreds of things I saw with my eyes that I've only begun to see clearly these

last few days. There's lots will take things as they arefat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of

feeling that it's all wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things are so that a lot

of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated

thinking, always make for a sort of donothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution

and the will of the Lord. Very likely you've seen the same thing. It's energy in a gale of funk, and turned

clean inside out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And those of a less simple sort will

"Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do trickswho knows?get

sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us."

"What's the good of going on with such lies?" said the artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it cheerful. What

"If they come after me," he said; "Lord, if they come after me!" and subsided into a grim meditation.

I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against this man's reasoning. In the days before

the invasion no one would have questioned my intellectual superiority to hisI, a professed and recognised

writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier; and yet he had already formulated a situation that

"Well, it's like this," he said. "What have we to do? We have to invent a sort of life where men can live and

breed, and be sufficiently secure to bring the children up. Yeswait a bit, and I'll make it clearer what I

think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they'll be big,

beautiful, richblooded, stupidrubbish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go savagedegenerate into

a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, how I mean to live is underground. I've been thinking about the drains.

Of course those who don't know drains think horrible things; but under this London are miles and

mileshundreds of milesand a few days" rain and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The

main drains are big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then there's cellars, vaults, stores, from which

bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin to see?

And we form a bandablebodied, cleanminded men. We're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in.

"Those who stop obey orders. Ablebodied, cleanminded women we want alsomothers and teachers. No

lackadaisical ladiesno blasted rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the

useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's

a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be happy. Moreover, dying's none so

dreadful; it's the funking makes it bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be London.

And we may even be able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the Martians keep away. Play

cricket, perhaps. That's how we shall save the race. Eh? It's a possible thing? But saving the race is nothing in

itself. As I say, that's only being rats. It's saving our knowledge and adding to it is the thing. There men like

you come in. There's books, there's models. We must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books

we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science books. That's where men like you come in. We must

go to the British Museum and pick all those books through. Especially we must keep up our science learn

more. We must watch these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When it's all working, perhaps I will. Get

caught, I mean. And the great thing is, we must leave the Martians alone. We mustn't even steal. If we get in

their way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm. Yes, I know. But they're intelligent things,

and they won't hunt us down if they have all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin."

"After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before Just imagine this: four or five of their

fighting machines suddenly starting offHeatRays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em. Not a Martian

in 'em, but menmen who have learned the way how. It may be in my time, even those men. Fancy

having one of them lovely things, with its HeatRay wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What would it

matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians'll open

their beautiful eyes! Can't you see them, man? Can't you see them hurrying, hurryingpuffing and blowing

and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle,

swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, SWISH comes the HeatRay, and, behold! man has come back to his

For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the tone of assurance and courage he assumed,

completely dominated my mind. I believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in the

practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks me susceptible and foolish must contrast

his position, reading steadily with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully in the

bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. We talked in this manner through the early morning time,

and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately to the house

on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had

spent a week uponit was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on

Putney HillI had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have

dug in a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at his

digging. We had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed

ourselves with a tin of mockturtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. I found a curious relief from

the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in my mind,

and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find

myself with a purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the distance one had to go before

the cloaca was reached, the chances we had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we

should dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at once down one of the manholes, and

work back to the house. It seemed to me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a

needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these things, the artilleryman stopped digging,

"We're working well," he said. He put down his spade. "Let us knock off a bit" he said. "I think it's time we

I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade; and then suddenly I was struck by a

"Oh, one can't always work," he said, and in a flash I saw the man plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. "We

ought to reconnoitre now," he said, "because if any come near they may hear the spades and drop upon us

I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof and stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof

door. No Martians were to be seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under shelter of the

From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney, but we could see the river below, a bubbly

mass of red weed, and the low parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the trees about

the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its

clusters. It was strange how entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water for their

propagation. About us neither had gained a footing; laburnums, pink mays, snowballs, and trees of arborvitae,

rose out of laurels and hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond Kensington dense smoke was

The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still remained in London.

"One night last week," he said, "some fools got the electric light in order, and there was all Regent Street and

the Circus ablaze, crowded with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting till

dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came they became aware of a fightingmachine

standing near by the Langham and looking down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must

have given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road towards them, and picked up nearly a hundred

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He

talked so eloquently of the possibility of capturing a fightingmachine that I more than half believed in him

again. But now that I was beginning to understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid

on doing nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that he personally was to capture

After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed disposed to resume digging, and when he

suggested a meal, I was nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went

away and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit these, and his optimism glowed. He was inclined to

"No," said he; "I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We've a heavy enough task before us! Let us take a

And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards after we had eaten. He taught me

euchre, and after dividing London between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we played for

parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true, and what is

more remarkable, I found the card game and several others we played extremely interesting.

Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no

clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted

pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three

After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on

smoking the cigars. He was no longer the energetic regenerator of his species I had encountered in the

morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound

up with my health, proposed in a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. I took a cigar, and

went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the Highgate hills.

At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the

fires near Kensington glowed redly, and now and then an orangered tongue of flame flashed up and

vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a

pale, violetpurple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a space I could not understand it,

and then I knew that it must be the red weed from which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that realisation

my dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of things, awoke again. I glanced from that to Mars,

red and clear, glowing high in the west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of Hampstead and

I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my

mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish cardplaying. I had a violent revulsion of feeling. I

remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring

exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this

strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it

seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my fellowmen were doing. I was still

After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and by the High Street across the bridge to

Fulham. The red weed was tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its fronds

were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that presently removed it so swiftly.

At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I found a man lying. He was as black as a sweep

with the black dust, alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing from him but curses and

furious lunges at my head. I think I should have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face.

There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets

were horribly quiet. I got foodsour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatablein a baker's shop here. Some

way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of powder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on

fire; the noise of the burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again.

Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies. I saw altogether about a

dozen in the length of the Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly past them.

The black powder covered them over, and softened their outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs.

Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in the City, with the closed shops, the

houses locked up and the blinds drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers had been at

work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in

one place, but apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered

on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep;

the hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress, and a smashed magnum

of champagne formed a pool across the pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead.

The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of

death it was the stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction that had already singed

the northwestern borders of the metropolis, and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these

houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and derelict. . . .

In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder. It was near South Kensington that I

first heard the howling. It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation of two

notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in

volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide down

Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing.

It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note great waves of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit

roadway, between the tall buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the iron gates of

Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural History Museum and find my way up to the summits

of the towers, in order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground, where quick hiding was

possible, and so went on up the Exhibition Road. All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty

and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon

a strange sighta bus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time,

and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see

nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to the northwest.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to me, from the district about Regent's Park. The

desolating cry worked upon my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The wailing took possession

of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and now again hungry and thirsty.

It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I alone when all

London was lying in state, and in its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old friends that I

had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in the chemists" shops, of the liquors the wine merchants

stored; I recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew, shared the city with myself. . . .

I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were black powder and several bodies, and an

evil, ominous smell from the gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty after the heat of

my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to break into a publichouse and get food and drink. I was

weary after eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I found there.

I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla." It was now dusk, and after I had

routed out some biscuits and a cheese in the barthere was a meat safe, but it contained nothing but

maggotsI wandered on through the silent residential squares to Baker Street Portman Square is the only

one I can nameand so came out at last upon Regent's Park. And as I emerged from the top of Baker Street,

I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which this

howling proceeded. I was not terrified. I came upon him as if it were a matter of course. I watched him for

some time, but he did not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that I could discover.

I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," confused my mind.

Perhaps I was too tired to be very fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason of this

monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the park and struck into Park Road, intending to

skirt the park, went along under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this stationary, howling Martian

from the direction of St. John's Wood. A couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping

chorus, and saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong towards me, and

then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. He made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared I

might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the silent road, the wailing sound of "Ulla,

I came upon the wrecked handlingmachine halfway to St. John's Wood station. At first I thought a house

had fallen across the road. It was only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this mechanical

Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart

was shattered. It seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been overwhelmed in its

overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might have happened by a handlingmachine escaping from the

guidance of its Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the twilight was now so far

advanced that the blood with which its seat was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs

Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the

trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the Zoological Gardens,

and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the smashed handlingmachine I came upon the red weed again,

As I crossed the bridge, the sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," ceased. It was, as it were, cut off. The silence

The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees towards the park were growing black. All

about me the red weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness. Night, the

mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation,

had been endurable; by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about me had upheld

me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of somethingI knew not whatand then a stillness that could be

London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white houses were like the eye sockets of

skulls. About me my imagination found a thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a horror of

my temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape

lying across the pathway. I could not bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John's Wood Road, and ran

headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn. I hid from the night and the silence, until long after

midnight, in a cabmen's shelter in Harrow Road. But before the dawn my courage returned, and while the

stars were still in the sky I turned once more towards Regent's Park. I missed my way among the streets, and

presently saw down a long avenue, in the halflight of the early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill. On the

summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless like the others.

An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I would save myself even the trouble of killing

myself. I marched on recklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the light grew, I saw that a

multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I

I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund's Terrace (I waded breasthigh across a torrent of

water that was rushing down from the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass

before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt

of itit was the final and largest place the Martians had madeand from behind these heaps there rose a

thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager dog ran and disappeared. The thought that had

flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation, as I ran up the

hill towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the

redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds

of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned warmachines, some

in the now rigid handlingmachines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the

MartiansDEAD!slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were

unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded

our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of thingstaken toll of

our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have

developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many those that cause

putrefaction in dead matter, for instance our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria

in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work

their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they

went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth,

and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For

Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a

death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time this

death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were

dead. For a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented,

I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even as the rising sun struck the world to fire

about me with his rays. The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful in their

power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the

shadows towards the light. A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the bodies that lay darkly in the

depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great

flyingmachine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death

arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge

fightingmachine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down

I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed now in birds, stood those other two

Martians that I had seen overnight, just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even as it had been

crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to die, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force

of its machinery was exhausted. They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the

All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities.

Those who have only seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the naked

Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed

dazzling in a clear sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and

Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses; westward the great city was dimmed;

and southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the

Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in

the sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and blue were the Surrey hills,

and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul's was dark against the

sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its western side.

And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought

of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef,

and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been

rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more

The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over the

country leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd the thousands who had fled by sea,

would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets

and pour across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All

the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill,

would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels.

At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought Iin a year.

With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the old life of hope and tender

And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not altogether strange. I remember, clearly

and coldly and vividly, all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising God upon the

Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so far from my being the first discoverer of

the Martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night.

One man the firsthad gone to St. Martin'sleGrand, and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had

contrived to telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a thousand cities,

chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin,

Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the pit. Already men,

weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up

trains, even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that had ceased a fortnight since

suddenly caught the news, until all England was bellringing. Men on cycles, leanfaced, unkempt, scorched

along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair. And

for the food! Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing

to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no

memory. I drifteda demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the

third day wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood. They have told me since

that I was singing some insane doggerel about "The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!"

Troubled as they were with their own affairs, these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my

gratitude to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves with me, sheltered me, and

protected me from myself. Apparently they had learned something of my story from me during the days of

Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what they had learned of the fate of

Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian. He

had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the

I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man and a sad one, and they bore with me.

I remained with them four days after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to look once

more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so happy and bright in my past. It was a mere

hopeless desire to feast upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me from this

morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them, and

parting, as I will confess, from these fourday friends with tears, I went out again into the streets that had

Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were shops open, and I saw a drinking

I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my melancholy pilgrimage to the little

house at Woking, how busy the streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were abroad

everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible that any great proportion of the

population could have been slain. But then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how

shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that every other man still wore his dirty rags.

Their faces seemed all with one of two expressionsa leaping exultation and energy or a grim resolution.

Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately

distributing bread sent us by the French government. The ribs of the few horses showed dismally. Haggard

special constables with white badges stood at the corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought

by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses

At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts of that grotesque timea sheet of paper

flaunting against a thicket of the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was the placard of the

first newspaper to resume publicationthe DAILY MAIL. I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found

in my pocket. Most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing had amused himself by

making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on the back page. The matter he printed was emotional;

the news organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing fresh except that already in one

week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the

article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the "Secret of Flying," was discovered. At Waterloo

I found the free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over. There were few

people in the train, and I was in no mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with

folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows. And just outside the

terminus the train jolted over temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened

ruins. To Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two

days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again; there were

hundreds of outofwork clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary navvies, and we were

All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had

suffered. Walton, by virtue of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the line. The

Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat

and pickled cabbage. The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red climber.

Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth

about the sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in the midst

of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were

everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and very painful

to the eye. One's gaze went with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to

The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing repair, so I descended at Byfleet station

and took the road to Maybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the hussars, and on by

the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside

to find, among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the whitened bones of the horse

Then I returned through the pine wood, neckhigh with red weed here and there, to find the landlord of the

Spotted Dog had already found burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an open

I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately. The door had been forced; it was

It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the open window from which I and the

artilleryman had watched the dawn. No one had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left

them nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house felt empty. The stair carpet was ruffled

and discoloured where I had crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the catastrophe.

I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writingtable still, with the selenite paper weight upon

it, the sheet of work I had left on the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I stood reading

over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable development of Moral Ideas with the

development of the civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: "In about two

hundred years," I had written, "we may expect" The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my

inability to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my DAILY

CHRONICLE from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and

I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and the bread, both far gone now in

decay, and a beer bottle overturned, just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was desolate. I

perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long. And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no use,"

said a voice. "The house is deserted. No one has been here these ten days. Do not stay here to torment

I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the French window was open behind me. I made

And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, were my cousin and my wifemy wife

She put her hand to her throatswayed. I made a step forward, and caught her in my arms.

I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little I am able to contribute to the discussion of

the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly provoke criticism. My

particular province is speculative philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a

book or two, but it seems to me that Carver's suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the Martians is

so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative.

At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war, no bacteria except those

already known as terrestrial species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the reckless

slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance of the putrefactive process. But probable as this

Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the Martians used with such deadly effect, and

the generator of the HeatRays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South Kensington

laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black

powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the

green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly

effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven speculations will scarcely be of interest to the

general reader, to whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted down the Thames after

the destruction of Shepperton was examined at the time, and now none is forthcoming.

The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far as the prowling dogs had left such an

examination possible, I have already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost

complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and the countless drawings that have been made

from it; and beyond that the interest of their physiology and structure is purely scientific.

A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the Martians. I do not

think that nearly enough attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present the planet Mars is in

conjunction, but with every return to opposition I, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure. In any

case, we should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to define the position of the gun from

which the shots are discharged, to keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate the

In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the

Martians to emerge, or they might be butchered by means of guns so soon as the screw opened. It seems to

me that they have lost a vast advantage in the failure of their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the same

Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a

landing on the planet Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun; that is

to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar

luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost

simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the

Martian disk. One needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable

At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly

modified by these events. We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a

secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us

suddenly out of space. It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not

without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most

fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to

promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the

Martians have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson, and that on the planet

Venus they have found a securer settlement. Be that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no

relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will

bring with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.

The broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there

was a general persuasion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty surface of our

minute sphere. Now we see further. If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the

thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable, as at last it

must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister

Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seed

bed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a remote dream. It

may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us,

I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my

mind. I sit in my study writing by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with

writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road,

and vehicles pass me, a butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a bicycle, children going to

school, and suddenly they become vague and unreal, and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot,

brooding silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the silent streets, and the contorted bodies

shrouded in that layer; they rise upon me tattered and dogbitten. They gibber and grow fiercer, paler, uglier,

mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold and wretched, in the darkness of the night.

I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the Strand, and it comes across my mind that

they are but the ghosts of the past, haunting the streets that I have seen silent and wretched, going to and fro,

phantasms in a dead city, the mockery of life in a galvanised body. And strange, too, it is to stand on

Primrose Hill, as I did but a day before writing this last chapter, to see the great province of houses, dim and

blue through the haze of the smoke and mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people

walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the sightseers about the Martian machine that

stands there still, to hear the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when I saw it all bright and

And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has