The War of the Worlds
LINDER
he crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, perhaps. There were raised vo
ack! Ke
running t
ssed; "a-screwin' and a-screwin' out. I
o or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another,
in the pit!"
ck!" sai
ay through. Every one seemed greatly excited.
se idiots back. We don't know what's
e he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scram
ed 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 stu
I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks--like eyes. Then something rese
e 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
as rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it b
one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whol
outh, 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 earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at o
pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cr
ees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and
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 west
ultitude 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 har