The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells [little red riding hood ebook free .txt] 📗

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAT-RAY

 

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 knee-deep in

the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground

of fear and curiosity.

 

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and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up,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 approached—he was, I perceived, a

neighbour of mine, though I did not know his name—and accosted. But

it was scarcely a time for articulate conversation.

 

“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 presently he was

walking towards Woking.

 

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 dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from

the pit.

 

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. I, too, on my side began to move towards the pit.

 

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 a white flag.

 

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 signals, that we too were intelligent.

 

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 sound became

audible.

 

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 flicker out from it.

 

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 man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

 

Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering

and falling, and their supporters turning to run.

 

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 flashes of trees and hedges and wooden

buildings suddenly set alight.

 

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, dome-like 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 were sending up

spires of flame into the stillness of the evening air.

 

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 been broken.

 

It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless,

unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from

without, came—fear.

 

With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the

heather.

 

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 do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to

look back.

 

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 death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap

after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.