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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 12. What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton
As the dawn grew brighter, we moved away from the window where we had watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs.
The artilleryman agreed with me that the house was no place to stay in.
He said he planned to make his way toward London, and from there rejoin his battery - Number 12, of the Horse Artillery.
My plan was to return at once to Leatherhead.
The Martians' strength impressed me so much I decided to take my wife to Newhaven and leave the country immediately.
I already understood clearly that the country around London would be the scene of a terrible struggle before such creatures could be destroyed.
Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with its guarding giants.
If I had been alone, I think I'd have taken my chance and crossed the country, but the artilleryman stopped me.
"It's no kindness to the right sort of wife,"
He said, "to make her a widow."
"Eventually I agreed to go with him under cover of the woods, northward as far as Street Cobham before I left him."
From there I'd make a big detour by Epsom to reach Leatherhead.
I should have started at once, but my companion had been in active service and he knew better than that.
He made me search the house for a flask, which he filled with whisky.
We filled every available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat.
Then we crept out and ran as fast as we could down the badly made road I had come the night before.
The houses seemed empty, In the road lay three burned bodies close together, struck dead by the Heat-Ray.
Here and there were things that people had dropped - a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and other poor valuables.
At the corner near the post office, a little cart, filled with boxes and furniture, without a horse, had fallen over on a broken wheel.
A cash box had been broken open and thrown under the rubbish.
Except for the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of the houses had suffered very much here.
The Heat-Ray had shaved the chimney tops and passed.
Yet, except for ourselves, there didn't seem to be a living soul on Maybury Hill.
Most people had escaped by the Old Woking road, the road I had taken to Leatherhead, or they had hidden.
We went down the lane past the man in black's body, wet from the night's hail, and entered woods at hill's foot.
We pushed through these toward the railway without meeting a soul.
The woods across the line were only scarred and blackened ruins.
Most of the trees had fallen, but some still stood, sad grey stems with dark brown leaves instead of green.
On our side, the fire had only burned the nearer trees.
It had failed to spread, In one place, the woodmen had been at work on Saturday.
Trees, cut down and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing, with piles of sawdust near the sawing machine and its engine.
Nearby was a temporary hut, empty, there wasn't a breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still.
Even the birds were quiet, their usual singing silenced by the strange stillness.
As we hurried along, the artilleryman and I talked in whispers and looked over our shoulders now and again.
Once or twice we stopped to listen.
After a time, we came near the road.
As we did so, we heard the sound of horses' feet and saw through the trees three cavalry soldiers riding slowly toward Woking.
We called to them, and they stopped while we hurried toward them.
It was a lieutenant and two privates of the 8th Hussars, with a stand like a theodolite, which the artilleryman told me was a heliograph.
"You're the first men I've seen coming this way this morning," said the lieutenant.
"What's happening?"
His voice and face were eager, the men behind him stared curiously.
The artilleryman jumped down the bank into the road and saluted.
"Gun destroyed last night, sir."
"I've been hiding."
"I'm trying to rejoin my battery, sir."
"You'll come in sight of the Martians, I expect, about half a mile along this road."
"What are they like?" asked the lieutenant.
"Giants in armour, sir. A hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like aluminium, with a great big head in a hood, sir."
"Get out!" said the lieutenant.
"What nonsense!"
"You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of box, sir, that shoots fire and strikes you dead."
"What do you mean - a gun?"
"No, sir," and the artilleryman began a vivid account of the Heat-Ray.
Halfway through, the lieutenant stopped him and looked up at me.
I was still standing on the bank by the side of the road.
"It's completely true," I said.
"Well," said the lieutenant.
"I suppose it's my job to see it too. Look here"
- to the artilleryman - "We're sent here to clear people out of their houses."
"You'd better go and report yourself to Brigadier-General Marvin at Weybridge and tell him everything you know, do you know the way"?
"I do," I said.
He turned his horse southward again and cantered slowly down the sunlit road.
"Half a mile, you say?" he said.
"At most," I answered, and pointed over the treetops southward.
He thanked me and rode on, and we saw them no more.
Further along, we came upon a group of three women and two children in the road, busy clearing out a worker's cottage.
They had got hold of a little hand truck and were piling it up with dirty-looking bundles and old furniture.
They were all too busy to talk to us as we passed.
By Byfleet station, we came out of the pine trees and found the country calm and peaceful under the morning sunlight.
We were far beyond the range of the Heat-Ray there.
Some houses were silent and empty, Others were busy with packing.
Soldiers stood on the railway bridge, staring down the line toward Woking.
Without these signs, the day would have seemed like any other Sunday.
Several farm wagons and carts were moving noisily along the road to Addlestone.
Suddenly, through the gate of a field, we saw across a stretch of flat meadow six twelve-pounders standing neatly at equal distances, pointing toward Woking.
The gunners stood by the guns waiting, and the ammunition wagons were at a safe distance.
The men stood almost as if under inspection.
"That's good!" I said.
"They'll get one fair shot, at least."
The artilleryman stopped at the gate and looked back toward the burning village.
"I'll go on," he said.
Further on toward Weybridge, just over the bridge, there were a number of men in white jackets building a long wall, and more guns behind.
"It's bows and arrows against lightning, anyway," said the artilleryman.
"They haven't seen that fire-beam yet."
The idle officers stood staring over the treetops southwest, and the digging men often stopped to stare the same way.
Byfleet was in confusion, People were packing, and a score of hussars, some on foot, some on horseback, were moving them about.
Three or four black government wagons, with crosses in white circles, and an old bus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street.
There were scores of people, most of them dressed in their best clothes as if for Sunday.
The soldiers were having great difficulty making them understand how serious their situation was.
We saw an old man with a box and score of orchid pots arguing with the soldier who would leave them behind.
I stopped him abruptly and grabbed his arm to force his attention.
"Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the pine tops that hid the Martians.
"Eh?" he said, turning.
"I was explaining these are valuable."
"Death!" I shouted.
"Death is coming! Death!" I left him to think about that if he could, and hurried on after the artilleryman.
At the corner, I looked back, the soldier had left him.
And he was still standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid, staring vaguely over the trees.
No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were.
The whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen in any town before.
Carts and carriages everywhere, the most amazing mix of vehicles and horses.
The respectable people of the place, men in golf and boating clothes, wives prettily dressed, were packing.
River-side workers were energetically helping, Children were excited and, for the most part, very happy at this surprising change to their usual Sunday.
In the middle of it all, the good vicar was bravely holding an early church service, and his bell was ringing out above the noise.
The artilleryman and I sat on the step of the drinking fountain and had a good meal from what we had brought with us.
Patrols of soldiers, no longer hussars but grenadiers in white, warned people to move or shelter in cellars as firing began.
As we crossed the railway bridge, we saw that a growing crowd of people had gathered in and around the railway station.
The crowded platform was piled with boxes and packages.
The normal traffic had been stopped, I believe, to allow the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey.
I have heard since that a terrible struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on later.
We stayed at Weybridge until midday, watching the busy, anxious crowds and preparations.
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 three mouths, and at this point boats can be hired.
There was a ferry across the river.
On the Shepperton side stood an inn with a lawn, and beyond it Shepperton Church's tower, since replaced by a spire, rose above the trees.
Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of people running away.
The flight hadn't yet become a panic.
But there were already far more people than all the boats going back and forth could carry across.
People came running along under heavy loads.
One husband and wife were even carrying a small door between them, with some of their household goods piled on it.
One man told us he meant to try to get away from Shepperton station.
There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even joking.
The people here thought the Martians were simply dangerous human beings who might attack and rob the town.
They believed the Martians would certainly be destroyed in the end.
Every now and then, people would look nervously across the Wey at the meadows toward Chertsey, but everything over there was still.
Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in strong contrast with the Surrey side.
The people who landed there from the boats went walking off down the lane.
The big ferryboat had just made a trip.
Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and joking at the people running away, without offering to help.
The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours.
"What's that?" cried a boatman.
"Shut up, you fool!" said a man near me to a barking dog.
Then the sound came again, this time from the direction of Chertsey - a muffled thud, the sound of a gun.
The fighting was beginning, distant guns and shouting marked the opening of battle.
Almost immediately, unseen batteries across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, joined in, firing heavily one after the other.
A woman screamed, Everyone stood still, caught by the sudden stir of battle, near us but invisible.
Nothing could be seen except flat meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery willow trees motionless in the warm sunlight.
"The soldiers'll stop them," said a woman beside me, doubtfully.
A thin haziness rose over the treetops, blurring the blue morning sky above.
Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of smoke that shot up into the air and hung there.
Immediately the ground shook and a heavy explosion smashed two or three nearby windows, leaving us astonished.
"Here they're!" shouted a man in a blue shirt.
"There! Do you see them? There!"
Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four armoured Martians appeared far away over the little trees.
They strode across the flat meadows toward Chertsey and hurried toward the river.
They looked like little hooded figures at first, moving with a rolling motion as fast as flying birds.
Then, coming toward us at an angle, came a fifth.
Their armoured bodies shone in the sun as they swept swiftly forward upon the guns, growing rapidly larger as they came nearer.
One on the far left, the most distant, raised a huge case high in the air.
The ghostly, terrible Heat-Ray I had already seen on Friday night struck toward Chertsey and hit the town.
At the sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures, the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be horror-struck for a moment.
There was no screaming or shouting, but a silence.
Then a low murmur and a movement of feet - a splashing from the water.
A man, frightened and unable to drop the bag on his shoulder, swung around and struck me with its corner, staggering me.
A woman pushed at me with her hand and rushed past me.
I turned with the rush of people, but I wasn't too terrified to think.
The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind.
To get under water! That was it!
"Get under water!" I shouted, but no one listened.
I turned around again and rushed toward the approaching Martian, right down the gravelly beach and headlong into the water.
Others did the same, a boatload of people coming back jumped 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, barely waist-deep.
Then, as the Martian towered overhead only a couple of hundred yards away, I threw myself forward under the surface.
The splashes of the people in the boats jumping into the river sounded like thunder in my ears.
People were landing hastily on both sides of the river.
But the Martian machine ignored the people running this way and that, like a man ignoring ants in a nest.
It showed the same lack of care as if a man's foot had kicked that nest.
When I raised my head above water, half suffocated, the Martian's hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing across the river.
As it advanced, it swung loose what must have been the generator of the Heat-Ray.
In another moment, it was on the bank, and in a stride it was wading halfway across.
Its front knees bent at the far bank, and in a moment it rose to full height again, near Shepperton.
Immediately, the six guns which, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the outskirts of that village, fired at the same time.
The sudden near explosion, the last close upon the first, made my heart jump.
The monster was already raising the case generating the Heat-Ray when the first shell burst six yards above the hood.
I gave a cry of surprise, I saw and thought nothing of the other four Martian monsters.
My attention was fixed on the nearer event.
Two other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted around.
The hood twisted in time to receive, but not to avoid, the fourth shell.
The shell burst directly in the face of the Thing.
The hood bulged, flashed, and was thrown off in a dozen torn pieces of red flesh and shining metal.
"Hit!" I shouted, with something between a scream and a cheer.
I heard answering shouts from the people in the water around me.
I could have jumped out of the water with that moment of joy.
The headless giant staggered like a drunken giant, but it didn't fall over.
It recovered its balance by a miracle.
No longer paying attention to its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now held stiffly up, it staggered quickly toward Shepperton.
The living intelligence, the Martian inside the hood, was killed and scattered to the four winds.
The Thing was now only a complex machine of metal rushing to destruction.
It moved in a straight line, unable to be guided.
It hit the tower of Shepperton Church, smashing it down as a battering ram might have done.
It turned aside, stumbled on, and collapsed with tremendous force into the river, out of my sight.
A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud, and broken metal shot far up into the sky.
When the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the water, the water immediately turned to steam.
In another moment, a huge wave, like a muddy tidal wave but almost boiling hot, came sweeping around the bend upstream.
I saw people struggling toward the shore and heard their screaming and shouting faintly above the hissing and roar of the Martian's collapse.
For a moment, I paid no attention to the heat.
I forgot the need to save myself.
I splashed through the rough water, pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see around the bend.
Half a dozen empty boats moved aimlessly on the confused waves.
The fallen Martian came into sight downstream, lying across the river, mostly under water.
Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage.
Through the wildly spinning wisps, I could see the giant limbs stirring the water now and then, vaguely.
They threw splashes and sprays of mud and foam into the air.
The tentacles moved and struck like living arms.
Except for the helpless purposelessness of these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life in the waves.
Huge amounts of a reddish-brown liquid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.
My attention was pulled away from this death struggle by a furious yelling, like that of a siren in our factory towns.
A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted to me without making a sound I could hear and pointed.
I looked back and saw the other Martians advancing with giant strides down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey.
The Shepperton guns fired this time without effect.
At that, I ducked at once under water.
I held my breath until moving was painful and struggled painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could.
The water was rough around me and growing rapidly hotter.
I raised my head for a moment to take a breath.
I pushed the hair and water from my eyes.
The steam was rising in a whirling white fog.
At first, it hid the Martians completely.
The noise was deafening, then I saw them dimly, huge grey figures, made larger by the mist.
They had passed by me, and two were bending over the foaming, confused ruins of their comrade.
The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two hundred yards from me, the other toward Laleham.
The generators of the Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams struck down this way and that.
The air was full of sound, it was a deafening and confusing mix of noises.
There was the loud clanging of the Martians.
Houses crashed as they fell, Trees, fences, and sheds burst into flame with a thud.
Fire crackled and roared, Dense black smoke was leaping up to mix with the steam from the river.
As the Heat-Ray moved over Weybridge, bright white flashes gave way instantly to a smoky dance of flames.
The nearer houses still stood unharmed, waiting for their fate, shadowy, faint and pale in the steam, with the fire behind them moving back and forth.
For a moment perhaps I stood there, chest-deep in the almost boiling water, shocked at my situation, hopeless of escape.
Through the smoke, I could see the people who had been with me in the river.
They were climbing out of the water through the reeds.
They looked like little frogs hurrying through grass from a man's advance.
Others ran back and forth in complete despair on the towing path.
Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping toward me.
The houses fell in as they dissolved at its touch and burst out flames.
The trees turned to fire with a roar.
The Ray flickered up and down the towing path, burning the people who ran this way and that.
It 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 path rose in a boiling line covered with steam.
I turned toward the shore, coughing from the steam and stumbling through the hot water
In another moment, the huge wave, nearly at the boiling point, rushed upon me.
I screamed aloud, Burned, half blinded, in pain, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water toward the shore.
If my foot had stumbled, it would have been the end.
I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, onto the wide, bare gravelly point that marks the angle of the Wey and Thames.
I expected nothing but death, every hope extinguished as flames closed in.
I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within twenty yards of my head.
It drove straight into the loose gravel, spun it this way and that, then lifted again.
I remember a long suspense, then the four men carried the remains of their comrade between them.
They were clear and then faint through a veil of smoke.
They moved away endlessly across a vast space of river and meadow.
And then, very slowly, I realized that by a miracle I had escaped.