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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 9. THE FIGHTING BEGINS
Saturday stays in my memory as a day of waiting.
It was also a day of tiredness, hot and still, with, I'm told, a quickly changing barometer.
I had slept very little, though my wife had managed to sleep, and I got up early.
I went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing moving except a lark.
The milkman came as usual, rattling his cart along the quiet street.
I heard the rattle of his cart and I went round to the side gate to ask the latest news.
He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by soldiers, and that guns were expected.
Then I heard a familiar, comforting sound, a train running towards Woking.
"They aren't to be killed," said the milkman, "if that can possibly be avoided."
I saw my neighbour gardening, talked with him for a while, and then walked in to breakfast, it was a very ordinary morning.
My neighbour thought that the soldiers would be able to capture or destroy the Martians during the day.
"It's a pity they make themselves so hard to reach," he said.
"It would be interesting to know how they live on another planet. We might learn a thing or two."
He came up to the fence and gave me a handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic.
At the same time he told me about the burning of the pine woods near the Byfleet Golf Links.
"They say," he said, "that there's another of those blessed things fallen there, number two, but one's enough, surely."
"He laughed with an air of great good humour as he said this."
The woods, he said, were still burning, and he pointed out a haze of smoke to me.
"They'll be hot under foot for days, because of the thick soil of pine needles and turf," he said, and then grew serious about "poor Ogilvy."
After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common.
Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers, Sappers, I think.
Men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots that came to the calf.
They told me no one was allowed over the canal.
Looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing guard there.
I talked with these soldiers for a while.
I told them about seeing the Martians the previous evening.
None of them had seen the Martians, and they had only the vaguest ideas about them, so they asked me many questions.
They said they didn't know who had ordered the movements of the troops.
Their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards.
The ordinary sapper is much better educated than the common soldier.
And they discussed the strange conditions of the possible fight with some cleverness.
I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves.
"Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one.
"Get out!" said another.
"What's cover against this heat?"
"It sticks to cook you!"
"What we've got to do is to go as near as the ground will let us, and then dig a trench."
"Forget your trenches! You always want trenches. You should have been born a rabbit, Snippy."
"Haven't they got any necks, then?" said a third suddenly.
He was a little, thoughtful, dark man, smoking a pipe.
I repeated my description to them, adding more about the Heat-Ray's appearance.
"Octopuses," he said.
"That's what I call 'em. Talk about fishers of men. It's fighters of fish this time!"
"It's no murder killing beasts like that," said the first speaker.
"Why not shell the darned things straight off and finish 'em?" said the little dark man.
"You can't tell what they might do."
"Where's your shells?" said the first speaker.
"There's no time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once."
So they discussed it at some length, arguing about plans and likely outcomes.
After a while I left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.
But I won't tire the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon.
I didn't manage to get a look at the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities.
The soldiers I spoke to didn't know anything.
The officers were mysterious as well as busy.
I found people in the town quite safe again with the military present.
For the first time, I heard from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common.
The soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.
I got back to lunch about two, very tired, for as I've said, the day was extremely hot and dull.
To refresh myself, I took a cold bath in the afternoon.
About half past four, I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper.
The morning papers had only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others.
But there was little I didn't know.
The Martians didn't show an inch of themselves.
They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous stream of smoke.
Apparently they were busy getting ready for a fight.
"Fresh attempts have been made to signal, but without success," was the standard phrase of the papers.
A sapper told me it was done by a man in a ditch with a flag on a long pole.
The Martians took as much notice of such advances as we'd of a cow mooing.
I must admit that the sight of all this weaponry, all this preparation, greatly excited me.
My imagination became warlike, and defeated the invaders in a dozen impressive ways.
Some of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back.
It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time.
They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs.
About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at regular intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone.
I learned that the smouldering pine wood where the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, in the hope of destroying that object before it opened.
It was only about five, however, that a field gun reached Chobham for use against the first group of Martians.
About six in the evening, I sat at tea with my wife in the summerhouse.
We talked strongly about the battle coming towards us.
I heard a muffled explosion from the common.
Immediately after, there was a burst of firing.
Right after that came a violent rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground.
I started out onto the lawn and saw the tops of the trees around the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame.
I saw the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin.
The top of the mosque had disappeared, and the college's roofline looked as if a hundred-ton gun had been at work.
One of our chimneys cracked, as if a shot had hit it.
It flew apart, and a piece came clattering down the tiles.
The broken red pieces made a heap on the flower bed by my study window.
My wife and I stood amazed, staring at the burning college and the rising smoke.
Then I realised the top of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians' Heat-Ray now the college was cleared.
At that I grabbed my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out into the road.
Then I brought out the servant, telling her I'd go upstairs myself for the box she was shouting for.
"We can't possibly stay here," I said.
As I spoke, the firing started again for a moment on the common.
"But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror.
I thought, confused, then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead.
"Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise.
She looked away from me downhill, the people were coming out of their houses, astonished.
"How are we to get to Leatherhead?" she said.
Down the hill I saw a group of hussars ride under the railway bridge.
Three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College.
Two others got off their horses and began running from house to house.
The sun, shining through the smoke that rose from the tops of the trees, seemed blood red, and threw an unfamiliar, strange light on everything.
"Stop here," I said.
"You're safe here." And I started off at once for the Spotted Dog, for I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart.
I ran, because I saw that in a moment everyone on this side of the hill would be moving.
I found him in his bar, quite unaware of what was going on behind his house.
A man stood with his back to me, talking to him.
"I must have a pound," said the landlord, "and I've no one to drive it."
"I'll give you two," I said, over the stranger's shoulder.
"What for?"
"And I'll bring it back by midnight," I said.
"Lord!" said the landlord.
"What's the hurry? I'm selling my bit of a pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What's going on now?"
I explained quickly that I had to leave my home, and so I got the dog cart.
At the time it didn't seem nearly so urgent that the landlord should leave his.
I made sure to have the cart right then.
I drove it off down the road.
Leaving it in the care of my wife and servant, I rushed into my house.
I packed a few valuables, such as our plate and other items.
The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this, and the fence posts up the road glowed red.
While I was busy with this, one of the hussars who had got off his horse came running up.
He was going from house to house, warning people to leave.
He was going on as I came out of my front door, carrying my treasures, wrapped in a tablecloth, I shouted after him,
"What news?"
He turned, stared, shouted something about "crawling out in a thing like a dish cover,"
And ran on to the gate of the house at the top of the hill.
A sudden swirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment.
I ran to my neighbour's door and knocked to be sure of what I already knew.
His wife had gone to London with him and had locked up their house.
I went in again, as I had promised, to get my servant's box.
I carried it, set it beside her on the dog cart, took the reins and jumped into the driver's seat beside my wife.
In another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise, and moving quickly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill towards Old Woking.
In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign.
I saw the doctor's cart ahead of me.
At the bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the hillside I was leaving.
Thick black smoke and threads of red fire rose into the still air, throwing dark shadows on the green treetops to the east.
The smoke already stretched far away to the east and west, to the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west.
The road was dotted with people running towards us.
Faint now but clear through the hot, quiet air came the whirr of a machine-gun, soon stilled, and the irregular cracking of rifles.
Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range of their Heat-Ray.
I'm not an expert driver, and I had to turn my attention to the horse immediately.
When I looked back again, the second hill had hidden the black smoke.
I hit the horse with the whip, and gave him a loose rein until Woking and Send lay between us and that shaking noise.
I caught up with and passed the doctor between Woking and Send.