The War of the Worlds

ng into that house--afterwards I found the front door was on the latch--nor how I ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of despair, in what seemed to me to be a servant's bedr

val 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 consecutively--a thing I do not remember to have done since my last argument with the curate

ading 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

ht 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

el 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 blood-stained 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 h

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 behe

vert. 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

ards of him, and I stopped. His voice was

t, surve

near the pit the Martians made about their c

is hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge

ered s

d in the ruins of a house thirteen or four

, then started, and looked

said I. "I think I shall go to Le

t a pointi

man from Woking. And you we

him at the

lleryman who came

d after they went away I got off towards Walton across the fields. But---- It's not sixteen days altogether--and your hair is grey." He looked over his sho

rtians?" I said. "Sin

glare you can just see them moving. By daylight you can't. But nearer--I haven't seen them--" (he counted on his fingers) "five days. Then I saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big.

and knees, for we ha

ly

he said

a little bowe

I said. "If they can do that the

nod

it. And besides----" He looked at me. "Aren't you satisf

ious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a vague hope; rather, I had kept a lifelong

'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 stars--

ng before me, trying in vain to d

yman. "It never was a war, any more t

led the night in

fired no more--at least, un

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 liv

," I

eatable

oking at

l they do wit

f 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

ce, and halt

ineral 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 up--sh

sse

ing 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

un!" I e

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

so, what is th

an looked at m

little feeds at restaurants. If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is up. If you've got any drawing room mann

mea

I'm not mistaken, you'll show what insides YOU'VE got, too, before long. We aren't going to be exterminated. And I d

t mean to

n are beat. We don't know enough. We've got to learn before we've got a chance. And we

nd stirred profoundly b

you are a man indeed!" And

is eyes shining. "I'v

n," I

eakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket 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 Sundays--fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will j

nd those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you've seen the

pau

m to do tricks--who knows?--get sentimental over the pet boy who grew

at's impossible! N

aid the artilleryman. "There's men who'd do it

mbed to his

"Lord, if they come after me!" a

nvasion no one would have questioned my intellectual superiority to his--I, a professed and recognised writer on philo

I said presently. "Wha

esit

bish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go savage--degenerate 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 miles--hundreds of miles--and a few days" rain and London empty will leave th

meant me

parleyed,

arrel about

don. 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 com

used and laid a bro

even-those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its Heat-Ray 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

de his lair. It was the coal cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon--it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney Hill--I 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

ing, and l

de. "Let us knock off a bit" he said. "I think it'

he resumed his spade; and then suddenly I was stru

out the common," I said,

aid. "I was coming bac

the w

e hesitated, holding his spade. "We ought to reconnoitre now," he said, "be

on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were to be seen, and

nd 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

ll me of the sort of people

men, dancing and shouting till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham and looking down at them. Heav

time no history wil

uring 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 t

eal, I was nothing loath. He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went away and returned with so

ampagne in the c

on this Thames-side

ve a heavy enough task before us! Let us take a rest and g

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

t the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delig

ecies 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 speec

London was black. Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple 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 pr

ng 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 dreame