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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 8. Friday Night
The most extraordinary thing about that Friday was how ordinary habits fit with the first events.
Those events would later knock our society down completely.
On Friday night, imagine you had taken a compass.
You'd have drawn a circle with a radius of five miles around the Woking sand-pits.
I doubt you'd have found one person outside it.
The only exceptions might be relatives of Stent, or of the three or four cyclists and London people lying dead on the common.
Their feelings or habits were affected by the new-comers.
Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it in their free time.
But it certainly didn't cause the excitement that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.
In London that night, poor Henderson's telegram described the gradual unscrewing of the shot.
It was judged to be a false story.
His evening paper sent a message to him for confirmation.
Receiving no reply, the man was killed.
The paper decided not to print a special edition.
Even within the five-mile circle, the great majority of people weren't active.
I have already described the behavior of the men and women to whom I spoke.
All over the area, people were eating dinner and supper.
Working men were gardening after the day's work.
Children were being put to bed, Young people were walking through the lanes making love, Students sat over their books.
There was a low sound of talk in the village streets.
A new topic spread in the public houses.
Here and there, a messenger or an eye-witness caused excitement.
People shouted and ran back and forth.
But for the most part, daily life went on as usual.
Working, eating, drinking, and sleeping continued as before.
It was as if no planet Mars existed in the sky.
Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham, that was the case.
At Woking junction, trains were stopping and going on until a late hour.
Others were being moved on the side tracks.
Passengers were getting off and waiting, Everything was going on in the most ordinary way.
A boy from the town, taking away from Smith's business, was selling papers with the afternoon's news.
The ringing crash of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mixed with their shouts of "Men from Mars!"
Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with unbelievable news, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might have done.
People rushing toward London looked into the darkness outside the carriage windows.
They saw only a rare, flickering spark dance up from Horsell.
There was a red glow and a thin veil of smoke moving across the stars.
They thought nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening.
It was only around the edge of the common that any disturbance was noticeable.
There were half a dozen houses burning on the Woking border.
There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there stayed awake until dawn.
A curious crowd stayed restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges.
One or two brave souls went into the darkness.
They crawled quite near the Martians, but they never returned.
A light-ray, like a warship's searchlight, swept the common, the Heat-Ray was ready to follow.
Except for such people, that large area of common was silent and empty.
The burned bodies lay about on it all night under the stars and all the next day.
A noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.
So you have the state of things on Friday night.
In the center, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned arrow, was this cylinder.
But the poison was hardly working yet.
Around it was a patch of silent common, smoking in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in twisted positions here and there.
Here and there was a burning bush or tree.
Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe, the inflammation hadn't spread yet.
In the rest of the world, the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for countless years.
The fever of war that would soon clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.
All night long, the Martians were hammering and moving.
They were sleepless and never tired, they worked on the machines they were making ready.
Every now and then, a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.
About eleven, a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and spread out along the edge of the common to form a line.
Later, a second company marched through Chobham to spread out on the north side of the common.
Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.
The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight.
The military authorities were certainly aware of the seriousness of the business.
About eleven next morning, papers said a group of hussars, two Maxims and four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started from Aldershot.
A few seconds after midnight, the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest.
It had a greenish color, and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning, this was the second cylinder.