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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 17. THE "THUNDER CHILD"
If the Martians had only wanted to destroy, they could have killed everyone in London on Monday, as the people spread slowly through the home counties.
The terrified crowd poured along the road through Barnet.
They also moved through Edgware and Waltham Abbey.
Others went eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness.
South of the Thames, they fled to Deal and Broadstairs.
That June morning, a balloon floating above London would have seen a strange sight.
Every road leading north and east was dotted black with fleeing people.
Each dot was a human being in agony of terror and physical pain.
I gave a full account in the last chapter of my brother's story.
It described the road through Chipping Barnet.
My readers can now understand how the swarming of black dots appeared to him.
Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together.
The legendary armies of Goths and Huns, the largest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been just a drop in that current.
And this was no disciplined march, it was a stampede, a gigantic and terrible stampede, without order and without a goal.
Six million people, unarmed and without supplies, drove headlong.
It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.
Directly below, the balloonist saw the network of streets, houses, churches, squares, crescents and gardens, abandoned, spread like a huge map.
And in the south, it was blotted out.
Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had thrown ink onto the map.
Steadily, without stopping, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out branches this way and that.
Now it banked against rising ground, now poured over a crest into a new valley, like a drop of ink on blotting paper.
And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the glittering Martians went to and fro.
Calmly and methodically, they spread their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that.
They laid it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose, and took possession of the conquered country.
They didn't seem to aim at killing everyone so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition.
They exploded any stores of gunpowder they came upon, cut every telegraph wire, and wrecked the railways here and there.
They were crippling mankind everywhere, breaking governments, shattering all organised resistance and hope.
They seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations, and didn't come beyond the central part of London all that day.
It's possible that a very large number of people in London stayed in their houses through Monday morning.
It's certain that many died at home, suffocated by the Black Smoke.
Until about midday, the Pool of London was an astonishing scene.
Steamboats and ships of all sorts lay there, tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by the fugitives.
It's said that many who swam out to these ships were pushed off with boat hooks and drowned.
About one o'clock in the afternoon, the thinning remains of a cloud of black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge.
At that, the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collisions.
For some time, a crowd of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge.
The sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed onto them from the riverfront.
People were actually climbing down the piers of the bridge from above.
When, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and waded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse.
I have to tell now about the falling of the fifth cylinder, the sixth star fell at Wimbledon.
My brother, keeping watch beside the women in the chaise in a meadow, saw the green flash of it far beyond the hills.
On Tuesday, the little party, still determined to get across the sea, made its way through the swarming country towards Colchester.
The news that the Martians were now in possession of all of London was confirmed.
They had been seen at Highgate, and even, it was said, at Neasden.
But they didn't come into my brother's view until the next day.
That day, the scattered crowds began to realise the urgent need for food.
As they grew hungry, the rights of property stopped being respected.
Farmers came out to defend their cattle sheds, granaries, and ripening root crops with guns in their hands.
A number of people now, like my brother, had their faces eastward.
And there were some desperate souls even going back towards London to get food.
These were mostly people from the northern suburbs, whose knowledge of the Black Smoke came from what they had heard.
He heard that about half the members of the government had gathered at Birmingham.
He also heard that huge amounts of high explosives were being prepared for use in automatic mines across the Midland counties.
He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the desertions of the first day's panic.
They had resumed traffic and were running northward trains from St. Albans.
This helped relieve the crowding of the home counties.
There was also a sign in Chipping Ongar.
It announced that large stores of flour were available in the northern towns.
Within twenty-four hours, bread would be distributed among the starving people in the neighbourhood.
But this news didn't stop him from the escape plan he had made.
The three pressed eastward all day, and heard no more of the bread distribution than this promise.
And, as a matter of fact, no one else heard more of it either.
That night, the seventh star fell, falling upon Primrose Hill.
It fell while Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that duty in turns with my brother, she saw it.
On Wednesday, the three fugitives, who had spent the night in a field of unripe wheat, reached Chelmsford.
A group of inhabitants seized the pony as food.
They called themselves the Committee of Public Supply.
They'd give nothing in exchange but a promise of a share the next day.
Rumours told of Martians at Epping, and Waltham Abbey Powder Mills were destroyed in a failed attempt to blow up one invader.
People were watching for Martians here from the church towers.
My brother, very luckily for him, preferred to push on at once to the coast rather than wait for food.
All three of them were very hungry.
By midday, they passed through Tillingham, which, strangely enough, seemed to be quite silent and deserted, except for a few secret plunderers hunting for food.
Near Tillingham, they suddenly came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of ships of all sorts that it's possible to imagine.
After sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they went to the Essex coast to Harwich, Walton, and Clacton.
Afterwards they went to Foulness and Shoebury to bring off the people.
They lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that disappeared into mist at last towards the Naze.
Close to the shore was a crowd of fishing boats, English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish.
There were steam launches from the Thames, yachts, electric boats.
Beyond were ships of larger size, there were dirty colliers, neat merchant ships, and cattle ships.
Passenger boats, petroleum tanks, and ocean tramps were also there.
An old white transport and neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg completed the scene.
And along the blue coast across the Blackwater, my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats bargaining with the people on the beach.
This swarm also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's eyes, like a water-logged ship.
This was the ram Thunder Child, it was the only warship in sight.
But far away to the right, over the smooth surface of the sea, lay a snake of black smoke.
This marked the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet.
They hovered in an extended line across the Thames estuary, steam up and ready for action during the Martian conquest.
They were watchful and yet powerless to prevent it.
At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic.
She had never been out of England before.
She'd rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country, and so on.
She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar.
She had been growing more and more hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two days' journey.
Her great idea was to return to Stanmore.
Things had always been well and safe at Stanmore, they'd find George at Stanmore.
It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the beach.
There, my brother soon succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames.
They sent a boat and made a deal for thirty-six pounds for the three.
The steamer was going, these men said, to Ostend.
It was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares at the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his charges.
There was food aboard, although at very high prices.
The three of them managed to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.
There were already about twenty passengers aboard, some of whom had spent their last money to get a passage.
But the captain stayed off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded.
He'd probably have stayed longer if it hadn't been for the sound of guns that began about that hour in the south.
As if in answer, the ironclad out at sea fired a small gun and raised a string of flags.
A jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels.
Some of the passengers thought that this firing came from Shoeburyness, until they noticed that it was growing louder.
Far away in the southeast, the masts and upper parts of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea.
They emerged beneath clouds of black smoke.
But my brother's attention quickly returned to the distant firing in the south.
He thought he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey haze.
The little steamer was already making her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping.
Essex coast grew blue and hazy when a Martian appeared, small, faint in the distance, advancing along the muddy coast from Foulness.
At that, the captain on the bridge shouted at the top of his voice with fear and anger at his own delay.
The paddles seemed infected with his terror.
Every soul aboard stood at the sides or on the seats of the steamer.
They stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or church towers inland.
It advanced with a slow imitation of a human stride.
It was the first Martian my brother had seen.
He stood, more amazed than terrified, watching this giant advancing deliberately towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell away.
Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over some short trees.
Then yet another, still farther off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky.
They were all moving seaward, as if to stop the escape of the many ships that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze.
The little paddle-boat's engines worked very hard, and her wheels threw out pouring foam behind her.
Yet she moved away with terrifying slowness from this threatening advance.
Looking northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already twisting with the approaching terror.
One ship passed behind another, Another came round from broadside to end on.
Steamships whistled and gave off volumes of steam.
Sails were let out, Launches rushed here and there.
He was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything seaward.
A quick turn of the steamboat to avoid being run down threw him headlong from the seat he was standing on.
There was shouting all around him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly.
The steamboat lurched and rolled him over onto his hands.
He jumped to his feet and looked to the right.
Not a hundred yards from their heeling, pitching boat, a huge iron bulk like the blade of a plough tore through the water.
It threw water on either side in huge waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, throwing her paddles helplessly in the air.
Then the waves sucked her deck down almost to the waterline.
A spray of water blinded my brother for a moment.
When his eyes were clear again, he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward.
Big iron upper parts rose out of this headlong structure.
From that, twin funnels stuck out and spat a smoking blast shot with fire.
It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping.
Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by holding the sides, my brother looked past this charging giant at the Martians again.
He saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were almost completely under water.
Thus sunken, and seen from far away, they appeared far less frightening than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly.
It seemed they were looking at this new enemy with astonishment.
To their minds, perhaps, the giant was even another like themselves.
The Thunder Child fired no gun, but simply drove at full speed towards them.
It was probably her not firing that allowed her to get so near the enemy as she did.
They didn't know what to make of her.
One shell, and they'd have sent her to the bottom at once with the Heat-Ray.
She was steaming at such a speed that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the Martians.
She was a shrinking black bulk against the receding flat line of the Essex coast.
Suddenly the front Martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad.
It hit her left side and bounced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of Black Smoke.
The ironclad drove clear of it, her hull cutting through the oily black vapour.
To watchers on the steamer, low in the water with the sun in their eyes, she seemed already among the Martians.
They saw the thin figures separating and rising out of the water as they moved back to shore.
One of them raised the camera-like generator of the Heat-Ray.
He held it pointing downward at an angle, and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch.
It must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod through paper.
A flash of flame went up through the rising steam, then the Martian reeled and staggered.
In another moment, he was cut down, and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air.
The guns of the Thunder Child sounded through the smoke, going off one after the other.
One shot splashed high close to the steamer, bounced toward the flying ships to the north, and smashed a fishing boat to pieces.
But no one paid much attention to that.
At the sight of the Martian's fall, the captain on the bridge shouted inarticulately.
All the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together.
And then they yelled again, For, surging out beyond the white confusion, drove something long and black.
The flames streamed from its middle parts, its ventilators and funnels spouted fire.
She was alive still, the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working.
She headed straight for a second Martian, and was within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear.
Then with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped upward.
The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion.
In another moment, the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the force of its speed, struck him and crumpled him like cardboard.
My brother shouted without meaning to, a boiling cloud of steam hid everything again.
"Two!" yelled the captain.
Everyone was shouting, the whole steamer from end to end rang with wild cheering.
It was taken up first by one and then by all in the crowding crowd of ships and boats that was driving out to sea.
The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third Martian and the coast completely.
And all this time, the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight.
When at last the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened.
Nothing of the Thunder Child could be made out, nor could the third Martian be seen.
But the ironclads out at sea were now quite close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat.
The little ship continued to make its way seaward.
The ironclads moved back toward the coast, still hidden by a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, swirling together.
The fleet of refugees was scattering to the northeast.
Several fishing boats were sailing between the ironclads and the steamboat.
After a time, and before they reached the sinking cloud bank, the warships turned northward.
Then they suddenly turned around and passed into the thickening haze of evening southward.
The coast grew faint, and at last couldn't be seen among the low banks of clouds that were gathering about the sinking sun.
Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns, and a form of black shadows moving.
Everyone struggled to the rail of the steamer and looked into the blinding furnace of the west.
But nothing could be seen clearly, a mass of smoke rose at an angle and blocked the face of the sun.
The steamboat throbbed on its way through an endless suspense.
The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened.
The evening star trembled into sight, it was deep twilight when the captain cried out and pointed.
My brother strained his eyes, Something rushed up into the sky out of the greyness.
It rushed upward at an angle and very swiftly into the bright clearness above the clouds in the western sky.
It was something flat and broad, and very large.
It swept round in a huge curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again into the grey mystery of the night.
And as it flew, it rained down darkness upon the land.