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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 16. THE EXODUS FROM LONDON
So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning.
The stream of flight rose quickly to a torrent.
It lashed in a foaming tumult around the railway stations.
It banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames.
It hurried by every available channel northward and eastward.
By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency.
They were losing shape and efficiency, they were guttering, softening, running at last in that swift melting of the social body.
All railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern at Cannon Street were warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were filling.
People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock.
By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station.
Revolvers were fired, and people were stabbed.
Exhausted and furious policemen, sent to direct the traffic, began breaking the heads of the people they were meant to protect.
As the day advanced, the engine drivers and stokers refused to return to London.
The pressure of the flight drove the people away from the stations.
They moved in an ever-thickening crowd along the northward-running roads.
By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes, and a cloud of sinking black vapour drove across the Thames to Lambeth flats.
It cut off all escape over the bridges in its slow advance.
Another bank drove over Ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but unable to escape.
After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at Chalk Farm, my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road.
The engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there ploughed through shrieking people.
A dozen strong men fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace.
He dodged across through a hurrying crowd of vehicles, and had the luck to be first in the sack of a cycle shop.
The front tire of the machine he got was punctured in dragging it through the window.
But he got up and off, with no further injury than a cut wrist.
The steep foot of Haverstock Hill was impossible because of several overturned horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.
He got out of the panic, skirted the Edgware Road, and reached Edgware about seven, fasting and tired but ahead of the crowd.
Along the road people were standing in the roadway, curious, wondering.
He was passed by a number of cyclists, some horsemen, and two motor cars.
A mile from Edgware the rim of the wheel broke, and the machine became unridable.
He left it by the roadside and walked through the village.
There were shops half opened in the main street, and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows.
They were staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning.
He succeeded in getting some food at an inn.
For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do.
The flying people increased in number, Many of them, like my brother, seemed inclined to stay in the place.
There was no fresh news of the invaders from Mars.
At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from blocked.
Most of the fugitives at that hour were on cycles.
But there were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.
Perhaps he had a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where some friends of his lived.
This thought at last made my brother strike into a quiet lane running eastward.
Presently he came upon a stile, and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward.
He passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names he didn't learn.
He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High Barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers.
He came upon them just in time to save them.
He heard their screams, he hurried around the corner.
He saw two men struggling to drag them from the little pony-chaise.
A third man held the frightened pony's head with difficulty.
One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white, was simply screaming.
The other, a dark, slender figure, slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her free hand.
My brother immediately understood the situation, shouted, and hurried towards the struggle.
One of the men stopped and turned towards him.
My brother realized from his enemy's face that a fight was unavoidable.
Being an expert boxer, he went into him at once and sent him down against the wheel of the chaise.
There was no time for boxing chivalry, my brother kicked him silent and seized the collar of the man pulling the lady's arm.
He heard the clatter of hoofs, a whip stung across his face.
A third enemy struck him between the eyes.
The man he held freed himself and ran off down the lane.
He was partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the horse's head.
The chaise moved away from him down the lane, swaying from side to side.
The women in it were looking back.
The man before him, a big rough, tried to close, and he stopped him with a blow in the face.
He realised he was alone, he dodged round and ran off down the lane after the chaise.
The strong man was close behind him.
The other man had turned now and followed at a distance.
Suddenly he stumbled and fell, his immediate follower went headlong, and he rose to his feet to find himself with two enemies again.
He'd have had little chance against them if the slender lady hadn't very bravely stopped and returned to his help.
It seems she had had a revolver all this time.
But it had been under the seat when she and her friend were attacked.
She fired at six yards' distance, narrowly missing my brother.
The less brave of the robbers ran off, and his friend followed him, cursing his cowardice.
They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third man lay unconscious.
"Take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver.
"Go back to the chaise," said my brother, wiping the blood from his split lip.
She turned without a word, they were both panting.
They went back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony.
The robbers had clearly had enough of it.
When my brother looked again they were retreating.
"I'll sit here," said my brother, "if I may." He got upon the empty front seat.
The lady looked over her shoulder, her face pale with anxious curiosity.
"Give me the reins," she said, and laid the whip along the pony's side.
In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother's eyes.
Unexpectedly my brother, panting, with a cut mouth, bruised jaw and bloodstained knuckles, drove along an unknown lane with the two women.
He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore.
He had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance.
He had hurried home, woken the women.
Their servant had left them two days before.
He packed food, hid his revolver under the seat, luckily for my brother, and told them to drive to Edgware to catch a train.
He stopped behind to tell the neighbours.
He'd catch up with them, he said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine.
They had seen nothing of him during the morning, and began to grow anxious.
They couldn't stop in Edgware because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane.
That was the story they told my brother in pieces when presently they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet.
He promised to stay with them, at least until they could decide what to do, or until the missing man arrived.
He pretended to be an expert shot with the revolver, a weapon strange to him, in order to give them confidence.
They made a sort of camp by the wayside, and the pony became happy in the hedge.
He told them of his own escape out of London, and all that he knew of these Martians and their ways.
The sun crept higher in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an uneasy state of waiting.
Several travellers came along the lane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could.
Every broken answer he got deepened his impression of the great disaster that had come on humanity.
It deepened his belief in the immediate need to continue this flight, he urged the matter upon them.
"We have money," said the slender woman, and hesitated.
Her eyes met my brother's, and her hesitation ended.
"So have I," said my brother.
She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a five-pound note.
She suggested that with that money they might get on a train at St. Albans or New Barnet.
My brother thought that was hopeless, he saw the fury of the Londoners crowding onto the trains.
He brought up his own idea of going across Essex towards Harwich.
Then he planned to escape from the country altogether.
Mrs. Elphinstone, that was the name of the woman in white, would listen to no reasoning, and kept calling upon "George."
But her sister-in-law was surprisingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my brother's suggestion.
So, planning to cross the Great North Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much as possible.
As the sun rose, the day grew hot, and the thick white sand underfoot burned and blinded them, so they travelled slowly.
The hedges were grey with dust, and as they advanced towards Barnet a loud murmuring grew stronger.
They began to meet more people, For the most part these were staring before them, murmuring unclear questions, tired, haggard, unclean.
One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground.
They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand held in his hair and the other beating invisible things.
His fit of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.
As my brother's party went towards the crossroads south of Barnet, they saw a woman approaching the road across fields on their left.
She was carrying a child and had two other children with her.
Then they passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small suitcase in the other.
A little cart came round the corner of the lane.
It was drawn by a sweating black pony.
A pale youth in a dusty grey bowler hat drove it.
There were three girls, East End factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in the cart.
"This'll take us round Edgware?" asked the driver, wild-eyed, white-faced.
When my brother told him it would if he turned to the left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.
My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them.
It was covering the white front of a terrace beyond the road.
That terrace appeared between the backs of the villas.
Mrs. Elphinstone cried out at tongues of smoky red flame leaping above the houses against the hot blue sky.
The loud noise now became the disorderly mixing of many voices, the grinding of many wheels, the creaking of wagons, and the quick sound of hoofs.
The lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads.
"Good heavens!" cried Mrs. Elphinstone.
"What's this you're driving us into?"
My brother stopped, breathing heavily, and stood looking at the chaos in the road.
For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human beings rushing northward, one pressing on another.
A great bank of dust, white and bright in the blaze of the sun, made everything within twenty feet of the ground grey and unclear.
It was constantly renewed by the hurrying feet of horses and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles.
"Way!" my brother heard voices crying.
"Make way!"
It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road.
The crowd roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and sharp.
Indeed, a short way up the road a villa was burning, sending rolling black smoke across the road and adding to the confusion.
Two men came past them, then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and weeping.
A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled doubtfully around them, scared and miserable, and fled at my brother's threat.
They could see the road toward London between the houses on the right.
It was a rushing stream of dirty, hurrying people trapped between the villas on either side.
The black heads and crowded forms grew clear as they rushed towards the corner.
They hurried past, then lost their individuality again in the moving crowd.
At last, the crowd was swallowed up in a cloud of dust.
"Go on! Go on!" cried the voices.
"Way! Way!"
One man's hands pressed on the back of another.
My brother stood at the pony's head.
Drawn by an irresistible force, he advanced slowly, step by step, down the lane.
Edgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a noisy riot, but this was a whole population in movement.
It's hard to imagine that crowd, it had no character of its own.
The figures poured out past the corner, and moved away with their backs to the group in the lane.
Along the edge came those who were on foot, threatened by the wheels, stumbling in the ditches, bumping into one another.
The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another and made little way for quicker, more impatient vehicles.
Those vehicles darted forward whenever an opportunity showed itself.
They sent the people scattering against the fences and gates of the villas.
"Push on!" was the cry.
"Push on! They're coming!"
In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army, waving his crooked fingers and shouting, "Eternity!"
"Eternity!" His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust.
Some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses and argued with other drivers.
Some sat motionless, staring at nothing with miserable eyes.
Some bit their hands with thirst, or lay flat in the bottoms of their vehicles.
The horses' bits were covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot.
There were cabs, carriages, shop-carts, wagons, beyond counting.
A mail cart, a road-cleaner's cart marked "Vestry of St. Pancras," a huge timber wagon crowded with rough men.
A brewer's dray rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood.
"Clear the way!" cried the voices.
"Clear the way!"
"Eter-nity! Eter-nity!" came echoing down the road.
There were sad, well-dressed women walking by with crying, stumbling children, their fine clothes dust-covered and faces marked with tears.
With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes angry and savage.
Fighting side by side with them pushed some tired street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed.
There were strong workmen pushing their way along, miserable, unkempt men, dressed like clerks or shopmen, struggling in short bursts.
My brother noticed a wounded soldier, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one poor creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.
But varied as its makeup was, certain things all that crowd had in common.
There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them.
A noise up the road, a quarrel for a place in a wagon, sent the whole crowd quickening their pace.
Even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was brought to life for a moment into renewed activity.
The heat and dust had already been at work upon this crowd.
Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked.
They were all thirsty, tired, and footsore.
And among the various cries one heard arguments, complaints, groans of weariness and fatigue.
The voices of most of them were hoarse and weak.
Through it all ran a repeated cry,
"Way! Way! The Martians are coming!"
Few stopped and came aside from that flood.
The lane opened at an angle into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a false appearance of coming from the direction of London.
Yet a kind of whirlpool of people drove into its mouth.
Weak people pushed out of the stream, who for the most part rested but a moment before jumping into it again.
A little way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags.
He was a lucky man to have friends.
A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a dirty black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap.
He removed his boot, his sock was blood-stained, shook out a pebble, and limped on again.
Then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping.
"I can't go on! I can't go on!"
My brother woke from his shock of astonishment and lifted her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone.
So soon as my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened.
"Ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her voice.
"Ellen!" And the child suddenly ran away from my brother, crying "Mother!"
"They're coming," said a man on horseback, riding past along the lane.
"Out of the way, there!" shouted a coachman, towering high.
My brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane.
The people pushed back on one another to avoid the horse.
My brother pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge, and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way.
It was a carriage, with a pole for a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces.
My brother saw through dust two men lift something on a white stretcher and put it on the grass beneath the privet hedge.
One of the men came running to my brother.
"Where is there any water?" he said.
"He's dying fast, and very thirsty. It's Lord Garrick."
"Lord Garrick!" said my brother.
"The Chief Justice?"
"The water?" he said.
"There may be a tap," said my brother, "in some of the houses. We have no water. I dare not leave my people."
The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house.
"Go on!" said the people, pushing at him.
"They're coming! Go on!"
Then my brother's attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced man pulling a small handbag.
It split as my brother's eyes rested on it, letting out a mass of gold coins.
The coins seemed to break up into separate pieces as they struck the ground.
They rolled here and there among the struggling feet of men and horses.
The man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling.
He gave a shriek and jumped back, and a cartwheel just missed him.
"Way!" cried the men all about him.
"Make way!"
So soon as the cab had passed, he threw himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began pushing handfuls into his pocket.
A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had been knocked down under the horse's hoofs.
"Stop!" screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, tried to grab the bit of the horse.
Before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back.
The driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round behind the cart, the many voices confused his ears.
He lay in the dust among his scattered money, unable to rise, the wheel had broken his back and his limbs lay limp.
My brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a man on a black horse came to his help.
"Get him out of the road," said he.
Clutching the man's collar with his free hand, my brother pulled him sideways.
But he still grabbed after his money, and looked at my brother fiercely, hitting at his arm with a handful of gold.
"Go on! Go on!" shouted angry voices behind.
"Way! Way!"
There was a crash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped.
My brother looked up, and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar.
There was a collision, and the black horse came staggering sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it.
A hoof missed my brother's foot by a hair's breadth.
He let go of the fallen man and jumped back.
He saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden.
My brother was pushed backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, and had to fight hard in the torrent to get back to it.
He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes.
A little child stared with wide eyes at a dusty, black object crushed under the wheels, the child lacked all sympathetic imagination.
"Let us go back!" he shouted, and began turning the pony round.
"We can't cross this hell," he said.
They went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was hidden.
As they passed the bend in the lane, my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet.
His face was deadly white and drawn and shining with sweat.
The two women sat silent, crouching in their seat and shivering.
Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again.
Miss Elphinstone was white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too miserable even to call upon "George." My brother was horrified and confused.
So soon as they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing.
He turned to Miss Elphinstone, suddenly determined.
"We must go that way," he said, and led the pony round again.
For the second time that day this girl proved her quality.
To force into the torrent, my brother jumped into traffic and held back cab horse while she drove the pony across its head.
A wagon locked wheels for a moment and tore a long splinter from the chaise.
In another moment they were caught and swept forward by the stream.
My brother, with the cabman's whip marks red across his face and hands, climbed into the chaise and took the reins from her.
"Point the revolver at the man behind," he said, giving it to her, "if he presses us too hard. No! Point it at his horse."
Then he began to look for a chance to edge to the right across the road.
But once in the stream he seemed to lose his will, to become a part of that dusty crowd.
They swept through Chipping Barnet with the torrent.
They were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the way.
It was noise and confusion beyond description.
But in and beyond the town the road forks many times, and this to some extent reduced the pressure.
They struck eastward through Hadley, On either side of the road, they came upon a great crowd of people drinking at the stream.
Farther on, some were fighting to get to the water.
And farther on, from a quiet moment near East Barnet, they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order.
The trains were crowded with people, with men even among the coals behind the engines, going northward along the Great Northern Railway.
My brother supposes they must have filled outside London, for at that time the furious terror of the people had made the central stations impossible.
Near this place they stopped for the rest of the afternoon, for the violence of the day had already completely exhausted all three of them.
They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger.
The night was cold, and none of them dared to sleep.
In the evening many people hurried along the road near their stopping place.
They fled from unknown dangers and went in the direction from which my brother had come.