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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 10. IN THE STORM
Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill.
The smell of hay came through the rich fields beyond Pyrford, and bushes on either side were sweet and bright with wild roses.
The heavy gunfire that had started while we were driving down Maybury Hill stopped as suddenly as it began, leaving the evening very peaceful and still.
We got to Leatherhead without trouble at about nine o'clock.
The horse had an hour's rest while I had supper with my cousins and asked them to take care of my wife.
My wife was strangely quiet during the whole drive, and seemed weighed down by bad feelings about the future.
I talked to her to calm her.
I said the Martians were held in the pit by their great weight and could at most crawl only a little way out.
But she answered only with short words.
If it hadn't been for my promise to the innkeeper, I think she'd have asked me to stay in Leatherhead that night.
I wish I had! Her face, I remember, was very white as we said goodbye.
For my own part, I had been wildly excited all day.
Something very like war fever had got into my blood.
It was the same fever that sometimes runs through a civilised society.
In my heart, I wasn't so very sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night.
I was even afraid that the last gunfire I had heard might mean the end of our invaders from Mars.
I can best describe my state of mind by saying that I wanted to be there when they died.
It was nearly eleven when I started to return, the night was surprisingly dark.
To me, walking out of the lighted hall of my cousins' house, it seemed truly black.
And it was as hot and heavy as the day.
Above us, the clouds were moving fast, although not a breath of wind moved the bushes around us.
My cousins' servant lit both lamps, Luckily, I knew the road well.
My wife stood in the light of the doorway and watched me until I jumped up into the dog cart.
Then she suddenly turned and went inside, leaving my cousins standing side by side wishing me good luck.
I was a little sad at first because of my wife's fears, but very soon my thoughts returned to the Martians.
At that time I knew nothing about how the evening's fighting had gone.
I didn't even know what had started the conflict.
I came through Ockham, for that was the way I returned.
I didn't go through Send and Old Woking.
I saw a blood-red glow along the western sky.
As I got nearer, it crept slowly up the sky.
The fast-moving clouds of the coming thunderstorm mixed there with masses of black and red smoke.
Ripley Street was empty, and except for a lighted window or two the village showed no sign of life.
But I nearly had an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a group of people stood with their backs to me.
They said nothing to me as I passed.
I don't know what they knew about the things happening beyond the hill.
I also don't know if the silent houses I passed were sleeping safely, or deserted and empty.
From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the Wey, and the red glow was hidden from me.
I went up the little hill beyond Pyrford Church, and the glow came into view again.
The trees around me shook with the first sign of the coming storm.
Then I heard midnight ringing out from Pyrford Church behind me.
The dark shape of Maybury Hill came, its tree-tops and roofs black and sharp against the red.
Even as I saw this, a bright green light lit the road around me and showed the distant woods towards Addlestone.
I felt a pull at the reins.
I saw the driving clouds broken by a thread of green fire that lit confusion and fell into the field to my left.
It was the third falling star, streaking down with that green, fiery thread.
Close after it appeared, and blindingly violet by contrast, came the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead.
The horse took the bit between his teeth and ran away.
A gentle slope runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we rushed.
Once the lightning had started, it went on in as fast a series of flashes as I have ever seen.
The thunderclaps, following one another with a strange crackling, sounded like a huge electric machine rather than the usual booming echoes.
The flickering light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail hit my face as I drove down the slope.
At first I looked at the road, then my attention was caught by something moving quickly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill.
At first I thought it was the wet roof of a house, but one flash after another showed it to be in fast rolling movement.
It was a hard-to-see vision, a moment of confusing darkness passed.
Then, in a flash like daylight, the red Orphanage near the hilltop appeared.
The green pine tops and this strange object came out clear and sharp.
And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it?
A huge tripod, higher than many houses, walking over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside as it moved.
A walking engine of shining metal, walking now across the heather.
Ropes of steel hanging from it, and the loud noise of its passage mixing with the noise of the thunder.
A flash showed it clearly, leaning to one side with two feet in the air.
Then it disappeared and reappeared almost instantly, with the next flash a hundred yards nearer.
Can you imagine a milking stool tipped over and thrown violently along the ground?
That was the impression those quick flashes gave.
But instead of a milking stool, imagine a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.
Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as weak reeds are parted by a man pushing through them.
They were snapped off and thrown aside, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, straight towards me.
And I was galloping hard to meet it!
At the sight of the second monster, my courage left me completely.
Without stopping to look, I pulled the horse's head right, and in a moment the dog cart overturned onto the horse.
The shafts broke noisily, and I was thrown sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.
I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze.
The horse lay still, his neck was broken, poor creature!
By the lightning flashes I saw the black shape of the overturned dog cart and the outline of the wheel still spinning slowly.
In another moment the huge machine went striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.
Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere senseless machine driving on its way.
Machine it was, with a ringing step, and long, flexible tentacles, one of which held a young pine tree, swinging around its body.
It chose its path as it strode, and the brass hood covering it moved back and forth like a head looking around.
Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal, like a giant fisherman's basket.
Puffs of green smoke shot from the joints of the legs as the monster swept by me.
And in an instant it was gone.
That's all I saw then, all vaguely because of the flickering lightning, in blinding highlights and deep black shadows.
As it passed, it set up a joyful, deafening howl that drowned the thunder - "Aloo!"
"Aloo!" - and in another minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, bending 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 minutes I lay in rain and darkness, watching by occasional lightning these huge metal beings moving in the distance over the hedges.
A thin hail was now starting, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again.
Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up.
I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below.
My shock did not allow me to climb the bank to drier ground or consider my immediate danger for a while.
Not far from me was a small one-roomed wooden hut, surrounded by a patch of potato garden.
I struggled to my feet at last, and, crouching and using every chance of cover, I ran for it.
I hammered at the door, I couldn't make the people hear, if there were any inside.
After a time I stopped, Using a ditch for most of the way, I crawled into the pine woods towards Maybury.
The huge machines didn't see me as I crouched hidden in the dark undergrowth.
Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my own house.
I walked among the trees trying to find the path.
The wood was very dark, the lightning was becoming less frequent.
Hail poured down in a flood, it fell in columns through gaps in the heavy leaves.
If I had fully understood the meaning of all the things I had seen, I'd have acted at once.
I'd have worked my way around through Byfleet to Street Cobham.
Then I'd have gone back to join my wife at Leatherhead.
That night the strangeness of things around me stopped me.
I was bruised, tired, wet to the skin, and deafened and blinded by the storm.
I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was as much reason as I had.
I staggered through the trees, fell into ditch, bruised my knees on a plank, and splashed into the lane from the College Arms.
I say splashed, for the storm water was washing the sand down the hill in a muddy flood.
There in the darkness a man bumped into me and sent me reeling back.
He gave a cry of terror, jumped sideways, and rushed on before I could gather my thoughts enough to speak to him.
So heavy was the force of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest time making my way up the hill.
I went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its boards.
Near the top I stumbled on a soft heap, by a flash of lightning I saw black cloth and boots at my feet.
Before I could see 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 strong man, cheaply but not poorly dressed.
His head was bent under his body.
And he lay crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been thrown violently against it.
Overcoming the disgust natural to one who had never before touched a dead body, I bent down 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 appeared before me.
I jumped to my feet, it was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose cart I had taken.
I stepped over him carefully and pushed on up the hill.
I made my way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house.
Nothing burned on the hillside, though from the common came a red glow and red rolling smoke against the pouring hail.
So far as I could see by the flashes, the houses around me were mostly unharmed.
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 didn't have the courage to shout or to go to them.
I let myself in with my key, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down.
My imagination was full of those striding metal monsters, and of the dead body smashed against the fence.
I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, shivering violently.