CHAPTER ONE

Before the War

In the last years of the nineteenth century, no one believed that this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater
than our own. We had no idea that we were
being studied almost as carefully as a scientist studies the small creatures in a drop of
water. With great confidence, people travelled around this world and believed that
they were in control of their lives. No one
gave a thought to possible threats from other
planets.
At most, people believed there might
be living things on Mars, perhaps less developed than us and ready to welcome visitors. But across the great emptiness of space,
more intelligent minds than ours looked at
this Earth with jealous eyes, and slowly and

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surely made their plans against us. And early

in the twentieth century, the great shock
came.
The planet Mars, I need not remind
the reader, goes around the sun at an average distance of 224,000,000 kilometres, and
receives from the sun half of the light and
heat that is received by this world. It must
be, if scientific thinking is correct, older than
our world, and life on its surface began a
long time before this Earth cooled down. Because it is hardly one seventh of the size of
Earth, it cooled more quickly to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and
water and all that is necessary to support living things.
But people are so blind that no writer,
before the end of the nineteenth century,
suggested that much more intelligent life had
developed there than on Earth. It was also
not generally understood that because Mars

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is older and smaller than our Earth, and further from the sun, it is nearer life's end as
well as further from its beginning.
Mars is getting colder, as one day our
planet must too. Its physical condition is still
largely a mystery, but we know that even in
the middle of the day, in its warmest areas,
the temperature is lower than during our
coldest winter. Its air is much thinner than
ours, its oceans have become smaller until
they cover only a third of its surface, and
from its far north and south the ice is steadily moving forwards. The end of all life,
which is a distant possibility for us, is an immediate problem for the Martians.
This has brightened their intelligence,
increased their abilities and hardened their
hearts. And looking across space, with instruments and minds more powerful than we
can dream of, they see, at a distance of only
56,000,000 kilometres, a morning star of

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hope - our own warmer planet with its green

land and grey seas, its cloudy atmosphere
and its growing population.
We, the people who live on this Earth,
must seem to them at least as different and
less developed as monkeys are to us. And before we criticize them for thinking in this
way, we must remember how badly we have
treated not only the animals of this planet,
but also other people. Can we really complain that the Martians treated us in the
same way?
It seems that the Martians calculated
their journey very cleverly - their mathematical knowledge appears to be much more developed than ours. During 1894, a great light
was seen on the surface of the planet by a
number of astronomers. I now believe that
this was a fire built to make an enormous
gun in a very deep pit. From this gun, their
shots were fired at us.

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The attack came six years ago.

Towards midnight on 12 August, one astronomer noticed a great cloud of hot gas on the
surface of the planet. In fact, he compared it
to the burning gases that might rush out
from a gun.
This, we now know, was a very accurate description. However, the next day there
was no report in the newspapers except one
small note in the Daily Telegraph, and the
world knew nothing of one of the greatest
dangers that ever threatened Earth.
I do not think I would have known
anything about it myself if I had not met
Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer. He was
very excited at the news and invited me to
spend the night with him, watching the red
planet.
Despite everything that has happened
since, I still remember that night very
clearly. Looking through the telescope, I saw

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a circle of deep blue with the little round

planet in the centre. Because it was so small,
I did not see the Thing they were sending us,
which was flying quickly towards me across
that great distance. I never dreamed of it
then, as I watched. Nobody on Earth knew
anything about the approaching missile.
That night, too, there was another
sudden cloud of gas from the distant planet
as a second missile started on its way to
Earth from Mars, just under twenty-four
hours after the first one. I saw a reddish flash
at the edge, the slightest bend in its shape, as
the clock struck midnight.
I remember how I sat there in the
blackness, not suspecting the meaning of the
tiny light I had seen and all the trouble that
it would cause me. I told Ogilvy, and he took
my place and watched the cloud of gas growing as it rose from the surface of the planet.

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He watched until one, and then we lit the

lamp and walked over to his house.
Hundreds of observers saw the flame
that night and the following night, at about
midnight, and again the night after that. For
ten nights they saw a flame each night. No
one on Earth has attempted to explain why
the shots ended after this. It may be that the
gases from the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Thick clouds of smoke or dust,
which looked like little grey, moving spots
through a powerful telescope on Earth,
spread through the clearness of the planet's
atmosphere and hid its more familiar
features.
Even the daily papers woke up to
these events at last, and there was much discussion of their cause. But no one suspected
the truth, that the Martians had fired missiles, which were now rushing towards us at

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a speed of many kilometres a second across

the great emptiness of space.
It seems to me almost unbelievably
wonderful that, with that danger threatening
us, people could continue their ordinary
business as they did. One night, when the
first missile was probably less than
15,000,000 kilometres away, I went for a
walk with my wife. I pointed out Mars, a
bright spot of light rising in the sky, towards
which so many telescopes were pointing.
The night was warm. Coming home, a
group of party-goers from Chertsey passed
us, singing and playing music. There were
lights in the upper windows of the houses as
people went to bed. From the distant railway
station came the sound of trains. The world
seemed so safe and peaceful.

CHAPTER TWO

The Falling Star

Only a few nights later, the first falling
star was seen towards the east. Denning, our
greatest astronomer, said that the height of
its first appearance was about one hundred
and fifty kilometres. It seemed to him that it
fell to Earth about a hundred kilometres east
of him.
I was at home at the time and writing
in my study with the curtains open. If I had
looked up I would have seen the strangest
thing that ever fell to Earth from space, but I
did not. Many people in that part of England
saw it, and simply thought that another

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meteorite had fallen. Nobody went to look

for the fallen star that night.
But poor Ogilvy had seen it fall and so
he got up very early with the idea of finding
it. This he did, soon after dawn. An enormous hole had been made and the Earth had
been thrown violently in every direction,
forming piles that could be seen two kilometres away.
The Thing itself lay almost completely
buried in the earth. The uncovered part
looked like an enormous cylinder, about
thirty metres across each end. It was covered
with a thick burnt skin, which softened its
edges. He approached it, surprised at the size
and even more surprised at the shape, since
most meteorites are fairly round. It was,
however, still very hot from its flight through
the air and he could not get close to it. He
could hear movement from inside but

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thought this was due to it cooling down. He

did not imagine that it might be hollow.
He remained standing on one side of
the pit that the Thing had made for itself,
staring at its strange appearance and thinking that there might be some intelligent
design in its shape. He was alone on the
common.
Then suddenly, he noticed that some
of the burnt skin was falling off the round
edge at the end. A large piece suddenly came
off with a sharp noise that brought his heart
into his mouth. For a minute he hardly realized what this meant, and although the heat
was great, he climbed down into the pit to
see the cylinder more closely. He realized
that, very slowly, the round top of the cylinder was turning.
Even then he hardly understood what
was happening, until he heard another
sound and saw the black mark jump

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forwards a little. Then he suddenly understood. The cylinder was artificial - hollow with an end that screwed out! Something inside the cylinder was unscrewing the top!
'Good heavens!' said Ogilvy. 'There's a
man in it - men in it! Half burnt to death!
Trying to escape!'
At once, thinking quickly, he connected the Thing with the flash on Mars.
The thought of the creature trapped
inside was so terrible to him that he forgot
the heat, and went forwards to the cylinder
to help. But luckily the heat stopped him before he could get his hands on the metal. He
stood undecided for a moment, then climbed
out of the pit and started to run into Woking.
The time then was around six o'clock.
He met some local people who were up early,
but the story he told and his appearance
were so wild that they would not listen to

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him. That quietened him a little, and when

he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in
his garden, he shouted over the fence and
made himself understood.
'Henderson,' he called, 'you saw that
meteorite last night?'
'Yes,' said Henderson. 'What about it?'
'It's out on Horsell Common now.'
'Fallen meteorite!' said Henderson.
'That's good.'
'But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder - an artificial cylinder!
And there's something inside.'
'What did you say?' he asked. He was
deaf in one ear.
When Ogilvy told him all he had seen,
Henderson dropped his spade, put on his
jacket and came out into the road. The two

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men hurried back at once to the common,

and found the cylinder still lying in the same
position. But now the sounds inside had
stopped, and a thin circle of bright metal
showed between its top and body.
They listened, knocked on the burnt
metal with a rock and, getting no answer,
they both decided that the men inside were
either unconscious or dead.
Of course the two were quite unable to
do anything, so they went back to the town
again to get help. Henderson went to the
railway station at once, to send a telegram to
London.
By eight o'clock a number of boys and
unemployed men were already walking to
the common to see the 'dead men from
Mars'. That was the form the story took. I
heard it first from my newspaper boy at
about a quarter to nine and I went to the
common immediately.

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When I got there, I found a little

crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding
the great pit in which the cylinder lay.
Henderson and Ogilvy were not there. I
think they understood that nothing could be
done for the moment, and had gone away to
have breakfast at Henderson's house. I
climbed into the pit and thought I heard a
faint movement under my feet. The top had
certainly stopped turning.
At that time it was quite clear in my
own mind that the Thing had come from the
planet Mars, and I felt impatient to see it
opened. At about eleven, as nothing was happening, I walked back, full of such thoughts,
to my home in Maybury.
By the afternoon the appearance of
the common had changed very much. The
early editions of the evening papers had
shocked London. They printed stories like:

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MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS

AMAZING STORY FROM WOKING
There was now a large crowd of
people standing around. Going to the edge of
the pit, I found a group of men in it Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall fair-haired
man I afterwards learnt was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with several workmen holding
spades. Stent was giving directions. A large
part of the cylinder had now been uncovered,
although its lower end was still hidden in the
side of the pit.
As soon as Ogilvy saw me, he called
me to come down, and asked me if I would
mind going over to see Lord Hilton, who
owned the land. The growing crowd, he said,
was now becoming a serious problem, especially the boys. He wanted a fence put up to
keep the people back.
I was very glad to do as he asked. I
failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but

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was told he was expected from London by

the six o'clock train. As it was then about a
quarter past five, I went home, had some tea
and walked up to the station to meet him.

CHAPTER THREE

The Cylinder Opens

When I returned to the common, the
sun was setting. Groups of people were hurrying from the direction of Woking. The
crowd around the pit had increased to a
couple of hundred people, perhaps. There
were raised voices, and some sort of struggle
appeared to be going on around the pit. As I
got nearer, I heard Stent's voice:
'Keep back! Keep back! '
A boy came running towards me.
'It's moving,' he said to me as he
passed, '- unscrewing and unscrewing. I
don't like it. I'm going home.'

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I went on to the crowd and pushed my

way through. Everyone seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound
from the pit.
'Keep those fools back,' said Ogilvy.
'We don't know what's in the Thing, you
know.'
I saw a young man - I believe he was a
shop assistant in Woking - standing on the
cylinder and trying to climb out of the pit
again. The crowd had pushed him in.
The end of the cylinder was being
screwed out from within. Nearly half a metre
of shining screw stuck out. Someone pushed
against me, and I almost fell down on top of
the screw. I turned, and as I did the screw
came out and the lid of the cylinder fell onto
the sand with a ringing sound. I pressed back
against the person behind me, and turned
my head towards the Thing again. I had the

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sunset in my eyes and for a moment the

round hole seemed black.
I think everyone expected to see a
man come out - possibly something a little
unlike us on Earth, but more or less a man. I
know I did. But, looking, I soon saw
something grey moving within the shadow,
then two shining circles - like eyes. Then
something like a little grey snake, about the
thickness of a walking-stick, came out of the
middle and moved through the air towards
me - and then another.
I suddenly felt very cold. There was a
loud scream from a woman behind. I halfturned, still keeping my eyes on the cylinder,
from which other tentacles were now coming
out, and began pushing my way back from
the side of the pit. I saw shock changing to
horror on the faces of the people around me,
and there was a general movement backwards. I found myself alone, and saw the

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people on the other side of the pit running

off. I looked again at the cylinder, and felt
great terror.
A big, greyish round creature, the size,
perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and
painfully out of the cylinder. As it moved up
and caught the light, it shone like wet leather. Two large dark- coloured eyes were looking at me steadily. The head of the thing was
rounded and had, one could say, a face.
There was a mouth under the eyes, and its
lipless edge shone wetly. The whole creature
was breathing heavily. One tentacle held
onto the cylinder; another moved in the air.
Suddenly, the creature disappeared. It
had fallen over the edge of the cylinder and
into the pit. I heard it give a peculiar cry, and
then another of these creatures appeared in
the deep shadow of the door.
I turned and ran madly towards the
first group of trees, perhaps a hundred

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metres away. I fell a number of times because I was running with my head turned
round. I could not take my eyes away from
these creatures.
The common was now covered with
small groups of people. They were all very
frightened, but still interested in the strange
happenings in the pit. Then I saw a round
object moving up and down. It was the head
of the shop assistant who had fallen in, looking black against the hot western sky. He got
his shoulder and knee up, but again he
seemed to slip back until only his head was
visible. Then he disappeared, and I thought I
heard a faint scream. For a moment I wanted
to go back and help him, but I was too afraid.
The sun went down before anything
else happened. The crowd around the pit
seemed to grow as new people arrived. This
gave people confidence and as darkness fell,
a slow, uncertain movement on the common

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began. Black figures in twos and threes

moved forwards, stopped, watched, and
moved again, getting closer and closer to the
pit.
And then, coming from the direction
of Horsell, I noticed a little black group of
men, the first of whom was waving a white
flag. They were too far away for me to recognize anyone there, but I learned afterwards
that Ogilvy, Stent and Henderson were with
others in this attempt at communication. As
the group moved forwards, a number of other people started to follow them.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light
and bright greenish smoke came out of the
pit in three separate clouds, which moved
up, one after the other, into the still air.
The smoke (or flame, perhaps, would
be a better word for it) was so bright that the
deep blue sky overhead seemed to darken as
these clouds rose. At the same time we could

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hear a faint sound, which changed into a

long, loud humming noise. Slowly a dark
shape rose out of the pit and a beam of light
seemed to flash out from it.
Then flashes of bright fire came from
the men, and I realized that the Martians
were using some kind of invisible ray. Then,
by the light of their own burning, I saw each
of the men falling, and their followers turning to run.
I stood staring, watching as man after
man fell over. As the unseen ray of light
passed over them, trees caught fire and even
the bushes exploded into flame. And far
away to the west I saw flashes of trees and
bushes and wooden buildings suddenly set
on fire.
This flaming death, this invisible
sword of heat, was sweeping round quickly
and steadily. I knew it was coming towards
me because of the flashing bushes it touched,

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but I was too shocked to move. All along a

curving line beyond the pit, the dark ground
smoked. Then the humming stopped and the
black, rounded object sank slowly out of
sight into the pit.
All this happened so quickly that I
stood without moving, shocked by the
flashes of light. It that death had swung
round a full circle, it would have killed me.
But it passed and let me live, and left the
night around me suddenly dark and unfamiliar. There was nobody else around. Overhead
the stars were coming out, and in the west
the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish blue. The tops of the trees and the roofs
of Horsell were sharp and black against the
western sky. Areas of bush and a few trees
still smoked, and the houses towards Woking
station were sending up tongues of flame into the stillness of the evening air.

27/197

I realized that I was helpless and

alone on this dark common. Suddenly, like a
thing falling on me from above, came fear.
With an effort I turned and began an unsteady run through the grass.
The fear I felt was panic - terror not
only of the Martians but of the dark and stillness all around me. I ran crying silently as a
child might do. After I had turned, I did not
dare look back.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mars Attacks
I ran until I was totally exhausted and
I fell down beside the road. That was near
the bridge by the gas-works.
I remained there for some time.
Eventually I sat up, strangely puzzled.
For a moment, perhaps, I could not clearly
understand how I came there. My terror had
fallen from me like a piece of clothing. A few
minutes earlier there had only been three
things in my mind: the great size of the night
and space and nature, my own weakness and
unhappiness, and the near approach of
death. Now I was my normal self again - an

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ordinary citizen. The silent common, my escape, the flames, seemed like a dream. I
asked myself if these things had really
happened. I could not believe it.
I got up and walked up the steep slope
to the bridge. My body seemed to have lost
its strength. The figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little
boy He passed me, wishing me good-night. I
thought about speaking to him, but did not. I
answered his greeting and went on over the
bridge.
Two men and a woman were talking at
the gate of one of the houses. I stopped.
'What news from the common?' I said.
'Eh?' said one of the men, turning.
'What news from the common?' I
repeated.

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'Haven't you just been there?' the men

asked.
'People seem fairly silly about the
common,' the woman said over the gate.
'What's it all about?'
'Haven't you heard of the men from
Mars?' I said. 'The creatures from Mars.'
'Quite enough,' said the woman.
'Thanks.' And all three of them laughed.
I felt foolish and angry. I tried but
could not tell them what I had seen. They
laughed again at my broken sentences.
'You'll hear more soon," I said, and
went on to my home.
My wife was shocked when she saw
me, because I looked so tired and dirty. I
went into the dining-room, sat down, and
told her the things that I had seen.

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'There is one good thing,' I said, to

calm her fears. 'They are the slowest, fattest
things I ever saw crawl. They may stay in the
pit and kill people who come near them, as
they cannot get out of it . . . but they are so
horrible!'
'Don't, dear!' said my wife, putting her
hand on mine.
'Poor Ogilvy!' I said. 'He may be lying
dead there.'
My wife, at least, did not think my experience unbelievable.
When I saw how white her face was, I
began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me about the impossibility of Martians capturing the Earth.
On the surface of the Earth the force
of gravity is three times as great as on the
surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would

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weigh three times more than on Mars, although his strength would be the same. That
was the general opinion. Both The Times and
the Daily Telegraph, for example, said this
very confidently the next morning. Both ignored, as I did, two obvious problems with
this theory.
The atmosphere of Earth, we now
know, contains much more oxygen than
there is on Mars. This certainly gave the
Martians much greater strength. And we also
learned that the Martians were so mechanically clever that they did not need to use their
bodies very much.
But I did not consider these points at
the time, and so I thought the Martians had
very little chance of success. With wine and
food and the need to help my wife feel less
afraid, I slowly became braver and felt safer.
I remember the dinner table that
evening very clearly even now: my dear

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wife's sweet, worried face looking at me from

under the pink lamp-shade, the white cloth
laid with silver and glass, the glass of red
wine in my hand. I did not know it, but that
was the last proper dinner I would eat for
many strange and terrible days.
If, on that Friday night, you had
drawn a circle at a distance of five kilometres
from Horsell Common, I doubt if there
would have been one human being outside it,
unless it was a relation of Stent, whose emotions or habits were affected by the new arrivals. Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about it, but it did
not have as much effect as a political event.
Even within the five-kilometre circle,
most people were unaffected. I have already
described the behaviour of the people to
whom I spoke. All over the district people
were eating dinner. Men were gardening,

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children were being put to bed, young people

were out walking together.
Maybe there was talk in the village
streets, a new topic in the pubs - and here
and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later events, caused some excitement. However, for most of the time the
daily routine of work, food, drink and sleep
went on as it had done for countless years.
People came to the common and left
it, but all the time a crowd remained. One or
two adventurous people went into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians,
but they never returned, because now and
again a light-ray swept round the common,
and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. And
all night the sound of hammering could be
heard as the Martians worked on the machines they were making ready.
At about eleven, a company of soldiers
came through Horsell and spread out in a

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great circle around the common. Several officers had been on the common earlier in the
day and one was reported to be missing.
Another one arrived and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight. The army was
certainly taking things seriously.
A few seconds after midnight the
crowd in the Chertsey Road, Woking, saw a
star fall from the sky into the woods to the
north-west. This was the second cylinder.
Saturday lives in my memory as a day
of worry. It was a lazy, hot day too. I had
only slept a little and I got up early. I went
into my garden and stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing
moving.
The milkman came as usual and I
asked him the latest news. He told me that
during the night the Martians had been surrounded by soldiers and that field-guns were
expected.

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'We have to try not to kill them,' he

said, 'if it can possibly be avoided.'
After breakfast, instead of working, I
decided to walk down towards the common.
Under the railway bridge I found a group of
soldiers - engineers, I think, men wearing
small round caps, dirty red jackets and dark
trousers. They told me that no one was allowed over the bridge. I talked with them for
a time and told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None had seen
them, so they asked me many questions. An
ordinary engineer is much better educated
than a common soldier, and they discussed,
with some intelligence, the odd conditions of
the possible fight.
After some time I left them and went
on to the railway station to get as many
morning papers as I could. These contained
only very inaccurate descriptions of the
killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy and the

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others. I got back to lunch at about two, very

tired because, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull. To make myself feel
better I took a cold bath in the afternoon.
During that day the Martians did not
show themselves. They were busy in the pit,
and there was the sound of hammering and a
column of smoke. 'New attempts have been
made to signal, but without success,' was
how the evening papers later described it. An
engineer told me that this was done by a man
crawling forwards with a flag on a long pole.
The Martians took as much notice of him as
we would of a cow.
At about three o'clock I heard the
sound of a gun, firing regularly, from the direction of Chertsey. I learned that they were
shooting into the wood in which the second
cylinder had fallen. An hour or two later a
field-gun arrived for use against the first
cylinder.

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At about six in the evening, as I had

tea with my wife in the garden, I heard an explosion from the common, and immediately
after that the sound of gunfire. Then came a
violent crash quite close to us, that shook the
ground. I rushed out onto the grass and saw
the tops of the trees around the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the
tower of the little church beside it slide down
into ruins. The roof of the college was in
pieces. Then one of our chimneys cracked
and broken bricks fell down onto the flowerbed by my study window.
My wife and I stood amazed. Then I
realized that the Martians could hit the top
of Maybury Hill with their Heat-Ray because
they had cleared the college out of the way.
After that I took my wife's arm and
ran with her out into the road. Then I went
back and fetched the servant.

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'We can't stay here,' I said, and as I

spoke the firing started again for a moment
on the common.
'But where can we go?' said my wife in
terror.
I thought, puzzled. Then I
membered my cousins in Leatherhead.

re-

'Leatherhead!' I shouted above the

sudden noise.
She looked away from me downhill.
Surprised people were coming out of their
houses.
'How will we get to Leatherhead?' she
asked.
Down the hill I saw some soldiers
rush under the railway bridge. Three went
through the open doors of the Oriental College and two began running from house to
house. The sun, shining through the smoke

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that rose up from the tops of the trees,

seemed blood-red and threw an unfamiliar
bright light on everything.
'Wait here,' I said. 'You are safe here.'
I ran at once towards the pub, whose
owner had a horse and cart. I ran because I
realized that soon everyone on this side of
the hill would be moving. I found the pub's
owner in his bar, with no idea of what was
going on. I explained quickly that I had to
leave my home, and arranged to borrow the
cart, promising to bring it back before midnight. At the time it did not seem to me so
urgent that he should leave his home.
I drove the cart down the road and,
leaving it with my wife and servant, rushed
into the house and packed a few valuables.
While I was doing this, a soldier ran past. He
was going from house to house, warning
people to leave.

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I shouted after him, 'What news?'

He turned, stared, shouted something
about 'crawling out in a thing like a dish cover', and moved on to the gate of the next
house. I helped my servant into the back of
the cart, then jumped up into the driver's
seat beside my wife. In another moment we
were clear of the smoke and the noise, and
moving quickly down the opposite side of
Maybury Hill.

CHAPTER FIVE

Running Away
Leatherhead is about twenty kilometres from Maybury. We got there without
any problems at about nine o'clock, and the
horse had an hour's rest while I had supper
with my cousins and left my wife in their
care.
My wife was strangely silent during
the drive, and seemed very worried. If I had
not made a promise to the pub owner, she
would, I think, have asked me to stay in
Leatherhead that night. Her face, I remember, was very white as I drove away.

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My feelings were quite different. I had

been very excited all day and I was not sorry
that I had to return to Maybury. I was even
afraid that the last shots I had heard might
mean the end of our visitors from Mars. I
wanted to be there at the death.
The night was unexpectedly dark, and
it was as hot and airless as the day. Overhead
the clouds were passing fast, mixed here and
there with clouds of black and red smoke, although no wind moved the bushes around
me. I heard a church strike midnight, and
then I saw Maybury Hill, with its tree-tops
and roofs black and sharp against the red
sky.
At that moment a bright green light lit
up the road around me and showed the distant woods to the north. I saw a line of green
fire pass through the moving clouds and into
the field to my left. It was the third cylinder!

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Just after this came the first lightning

of the storm, and the thunder burst like a
gun overhead. The horse ran forwards in terror at high speed.
There is a gentle slope towards the
foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we went.
After the lightning had begun, it flashed
again and again, as quickly as I have ever
seen. The thunder crashed almost all the
time. The flashing light was blinding and
confusing, and thin rain hit my face as I
drove down the slope.
I paid little attention to the road in
front of me, and then suddenly my attention
was caught by something. At first I thought it
was the wet roof of a house, but the lightning
flashes showed that it was moving quickly
down Maybury Hill. Then there was a great
flash like daylight and this strange object
could be seen clearly.

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How can I describe this Thing that I

saw? It was an enormous tripod, higher than
many houses, stepping over the young trees.
It was a walking engine of shining metal.
Then suddenly, the trees in the wood
ahead of me were pushed to the side and a
second enormous tripod appeared, rushing,
as it seemed, straight towards me. And I was
driving fast to meet it. At the sight of this
second machine I panicked completely. I
pulled my horse's head hard round to the
right. The cart turned over on the horse and I
was thrown sideways. I fell heavily into a
shallow pool of water.
I crawled out almost immediately and
lay, my feet still in the water, under a bush.
The horse did not move (his neck was
broken, poor animal!) and by the lightning
flashes I saw the turned-over cart and one
wheel still spinning slowly. Then the

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enormous machine walked past me and went

uphill.
As it passed it gave a deafening howl
that was louder than the thunder - 'Aloo!
Aloo!' - and a minute later it was with another one, half a kilometre away, bending over
something in a field. I have no doubt that
this was the third of the cylinders they had
fired at us from Mars.
I was wet with rain above and poolwater below. It was some time before my
shock would let me struggle up into a drier
position, or think of the great danger I was
in.
I got to my feet at last and, keeping
low, managed to get into a wood near Maybury without the machines seeing me. Staying in the wood, I moved towards my own
house. If I had really understood the meaning of all the things I had seen, I would have
gone back to join my wife in Leatherhead

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immediately. But that night it was all very

strange and I was physically exhausted, wet
to the skin, deafened and blinded by the
storm. All these things prevented me from
making a sensible decision.
I walked up the narrow road towards
my house. Near the top I stood on something
soft and, by a flash of lightning, saw the body
of a man. I had never touched a dead body
before, but I forced myself to turn him over
and feel for his heart. He certainly was dead.
It seemed that his neck had been broken.
Then the lightning flashed again and I saw
his face. It was the owner of the pub, whose
cart I had taken.
I stepped over him nervously and
moved on up the hill. Towards Maybury
Bridge there were voices and the sound of
feet, but I did not have the courage to shout
or go to them. I let myself into my house and

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locked the door, walked to the bottom of the

stairs and sat down, shaking violently.
It was some time before I could get to
my feet again and put on some dry clothes.
After that I went upstairs to my study. The
window looks over the trees and the railway
towards Horsell Common. In the hurry to
leave it had been left open. I stopped in the
doorway, at a safe distance from it.
The thunderstorm had passed. The
towers of the Oriental College and the trees
around it had gone. Very far away, lit by red
fire, the common was visible. Across the
light, great black shapes moved busily backwards and forwards.
I closed the door noiselessly and
moved nearer the window. The view opened
out until, on one side, it reached to the
houses around Woking Station, and on the
other, to the burnt woods of Byfleet. Between
them were areas of fire and smoking ground.

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The view reminded me, more than anything

else, of factories at night.
I turned my desk chair to the window
and stared out at the country and, in particular, at the three enormous black Things that
were moving around the common. They
seemed very busy. I began to ask myself what
they could be. Were they intelligent machines? I felt this was impossible. Or did a
Martian sit inside each, controlling it in the
same way that a man's brain controls his
body?
The storm had left the sky clear, and
over the smoke of the burning land the tiny
bright light of Mars was dropping into the
west, when a soldier came quietly into my
garden. I got up and leant out of the window.
'Psst!' I said, in a whisper.
He stopped for a moment, then
walked across to the house.

50/197

'Who's
whispering.

there?'

he

said,

also

'Are you trying to hide?' I asked.

'I am.'
'Come into the house,' I said.
I went down, opened the door and let
him in. I could not see his face. He had no
hat and his coat was unbuttoned.
'What's happened?' I asked.
'We didn't have a chance.' he said.
'Not a chance.'
He followed me into the dining-room.
'Have a drink,' I said, pouring one for
him.
He drank it. Then suddenly he sat
down at the table, put his head on his arms
and began to cry like a little boy. It was a

51/197

long time before he was able to answer my

questions, and the answers he gave were
puzzled and came in broken sentences.
He was part of a field-gun team. They
were turning their gun to fire on one of the
tripods when it suddenly exploded. He found
himself lying under a group of burnt dead
men and horses. His back was hurt by the
fall of a horse and he lay there for a long
time. He watched as the foot-soldiers rushed
towards the tripod. They all went down in a
second. Then the tripod walked slowly over
the common. A kind of arm held a complicated metal case, out of which the Heat-Ray
flashed as it killed anyone who was still moving. Then the tripod turned and walked away
towards where the second cylinder lay.
At last the soldier was able to move,
crawling at first, and he got to Woking. There
were a few people still alive there; most of
them were very frightened, and many of

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them had been burnt. He hid behind a

broken wall as one of the Martian tripods returned. He saw this one go after a man, catch
him in one of its steel arms and knock his
head against a tree. After it got dark, the soldier finally ran and managed to get across
the railway.
That was the story I got from him, bit
by bit. He grew calmer telling me. He had
eaten no food since midday, and I found
some meat and bread and brought it into the
room. As we talked, the sky gradually became lighter. I began to see his face,
blackened and exhausted, as no doubt mine
was too.
When we had finished eating, we went
quietly upstairs to my study and I looked
again out of the open window. In one night
the valley had become a place of death. The
fires had died down now, but the ruins of
broken and burnt-out houses and blackened

53/197

trees were clear in the cold light of the dawn.

Destruction had never been so total in the
history of war. And, shining in the morning
light, three of the tripods stood on the common, their tops turning as they examined the
damage they had done.

CHAPTER SIX

The Death of Towns

As the dawn grew brighter, we moved
back from the window where we had
watched and went very quietly downstairs.
The soldier agreed with me that the
house was not a good place to stay in. He
suggested going towards London, where he
could rejoin his company. My plan was to return at once to Leatherhead. The strength of
the Martians worried me so much that I had
decided to take my wife to the south coast,
and leave the country with her immediately.
I had already decided that the area around
London would be the scene of a great battle
before the Martians could be destroyed.

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Between
us
and
Leatherhead,
however, lay the third cylinder. If I had been
alone, I think I would have taken my chance
and gone straight across country. But the
soldier persuaded me not to. 'It's no kindness to your wife,' he said, 'for you to get
killed.' In the end I agreed to go north with
him under cover of the woods. After that I
would leave him and turn off to reach
Leatherhead.
I wanted to start at once, but the soldier had been in wars before and knew better
than that. He made me find all the food and
drink that we could carry, and we filled our
pockets. Then we left the house and ran as
quickly as we could down the narrow road.
All the houses seemed empty. In the road lay
a pile of three burnt bodies close together,
killed by the Heat-Ray. In fact, apart from
ourselves, there did not seem to be a living
person on Maybury Hill.

56/197

We reached the woods at the foot of

the hill and moved through these towards
the road. As we ran, we heard the sound of
horses and saw through the trees three soldiers riding towards Woking. We shouted
and they stopped while we hurried towards
them. They were an officer and two men.
'You are the first people I've seen
coming this way this morning,' the officer
said. 'What's happening?'
The soldier who had stayed with me
stepped up to him. 'My gun was destroyed
last night, sir. I've been hiding. I'm trying to
rejoin my company. You'll come in sight of
the Martians, I expect, about a kilometre
along this road.'
'What do they look like?' asked the
officer.
'Big machines, sir. Thirty metres high.
Three legs and a great big head, sir.'

57/197

'What nonsense!' said the officer.

'You'll see, sir. They carry a kind of
box that shoots fire and strikes you dead.'
'What do you mean - a gun?'
'No, sir.' And he began to describe the
Heat-Ray.
Half-way through his report the officer interrupted him and looked at me.
'Did you see it?' he said.
'It's perfectly true,' I replied.
'Well,' he said. 'I suppose it's my business to see it too. Listen,' he said to my new
friend, 'you'd better go to Weybridge and report to the highest officer.'
He thanked me and they rode away.
By Byfleet station we came out from
the trees and found the country calm and

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peaceful in the morning sunlight. It seemed

like any other Sunday - except for the empty
houses, and the other ones where people
were packing.
However, Byfleet was very busy. Soldiers were telling people to leave and helping
them to load carts in the main street. Many
people, though, did not realize how serious
the situation was. I saw one old man with a
big box and a number of flower-pots, angrily
arguing with a soldier who wanted him to
leave them behind.
'Do you know what's over there?' I
said, pointing towards the woods that hid the
Martians.
'Eh?' he said. 'I was explaining that
these are valuable.'
'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming!
Death!' and leaving him to think about that, I
hurried on to Weybridge.

59/197

We remained there until midday, and

at that time found ourselves at the place
where the River Wey joins the River Thames.
Here we found an excited crowd of people.
There was no great fear at this time, but
already there were more people than all the
boats could carry across the Thames. Every
now and then people looked nervously at the
fields beyond Chertsey, but everything there
was still.
Then came the sound of a gun and, almost immediately, other guns across the
river, unseen because of the trees, began to
fire. Everyone stood still, stopped by the sudden sound of battle, near us but invisible to
us.
Then we saw a cloud of smoke far
away up the river. The ground moved and a
heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two
or three windows in the houses and leaving
us shocked.

60/197

'Look!' shouted a man. 'Over there! Do

you see them?'
Quickly, one after the other, one, two,
three, four of the Martian machines appeared, far away over the low trees towards
Chertsey. Then, from a different direction, a
fifth one came towards us. Their metal bodies shone in the sun as they moved forwards
to the guns. One on the left, the furthest
away, held a large case high in the air, and
the terrible Heat-Ray shone towards Chertsey and struck the town.
At the sight of these strange, quick
and terrible creatures, the crowd near the
water's edge seemed for a moment to be
totally shocked. There was no screaming or
shouting, but a silence. Then came some
quiet talk and the beginning of movement. A
woman pushed at me with her hand and
rushed past me. I turned, but I was not too
frightened for thought.

61/197

'Get under water!' I shouted, but

nobody listened.
I turned around again and ran towards the approaching Martian, ran right
down the stony beach and dived into the water. Others did the same. The stones under
my feet were muddy and slippery, and the
river was so low that I moved perhaps seven
metres before I could get under the surface. I
could hear people jumping off boats into the
water.
But the Martian took no notice of us.
When I lifted my head it was looking towards
the guns that were still firing across the river.
It was already raising the case which sent the
Heat-Ray when the first shell burst six
metres above its head.
I gave a cry of surprise. Then two other shells burst at the same time in the air
near its body. Its head twisted round in time

62/197

to receive, but not in time to avoid, the

fourth shell.
This exploded right in its face. Its
head flashed and burst into a dozen broken
pieces of red flesh and shining metal.
'Hit!' I shouted.
The headless machine marched on,
swinging from side to side. It hit a church
tower, knocking it down, then moved on and
fell into the river out of sight.
A violent explosion shook the air, and
a column of water, steam, mud and broken
metal shot far up into the sky. In another
moment a great wave of very hot water came
sweeping round the bend. I saw people
struggling towards the shore and heard their
screaming and shouting faintly above the
noise of the Martian's fall.

63/197

I rushed through the water until I

could see round the bend. The Martian came
into sight down the river, most of it under
the water. Thick clouds of steam were pouring from the wreckage, and through it I could
see its long legs and tentacles moving in the
water.
My attention was caught by an angry
noise. A man, knee-deep in the water,
shouted to me and pointed, although I could
not hear what he said. Looking back, I saw
the other Martians walking down the riverbank from the direction of Chertsey. The
guns fired again, but with no effect.
At that moment I got under the water
and, holding my breath until movement was
painful, swam under the surface for as long
as I could. The river was rough around me
and quickly growing hotter.
When for a moment I raised my head
to breathe and throw the hair and water out

64/197

of my eyes, the steam was rising in a white

fog that hid the Martians completely. The
noise was deafening. Then I saw them,
enormous grey figures. They had passed me
and two were bending over the fallen one.
The third and fourth stood beside him
in the water. The cases that produced the
Heat-Rays were waved high and the beams
flashed this way and that.
The air was full of deafening and confusing noises: the loud sounds of the Martians, the crash of falling houses, the flash of
fire as trees and fences began to burn. Thick
black smoke was rising to mix with the steam
from the river.
Then suddenly the white flashes of the
Heat-Ray came towards me. The houses fell
as it touched them, and exploded into flame.
The trees caught fire with a loud noise. The
Heat- Ray came down to the water's edge
less than fifty metres from where I stood. It

65/197

ran across the river and the water behind it

boiled. I turned towards the shore.
In another moment a large wave of almost boiling water rushed towards me. I
screamed and ran. If my foot had slipped, it
would have been the end. I fell in full view of
the Martians on the stony beach. I expected
only death.
I have a faknee-int memory of the foot
of a Martian coming down within twenty
metres of my head, going straight into the
loose stones. Then I saw the four of them
carrying the remains of the fallen one
between them, now clear and then later faint
through a curtain of smoke, moving away
from me across a great space of river and
fields. And then, very slowly. I realized that
somehow I had escaped.
I saw an empty boat, very small and
far away, moving down the river and, taking
off most of my wet clothes, I swam to it. I

66/197

used my hands to keep it moving, down the

river towards Walton, going very slowly and
often looking behind me. I was in some pain
and very tired. When the bridge at Walton
was coming into sight, I landed on the
Middlesex bank and lay down, very sick, in
the long grass.
I do not remember the arrival of the
curate, so probably I slept for some time. As
I woke up, I noticed a seated figure with his
face staring at the sky, watching the sunset.
I sat up, and at the sound of my movement he looked at me.
'Have you any water?' I asked.
He shook his head.
'You have been asking for water for
the last hour,' he said.

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For a moment we were silent, staring

at each other. He spoke suddenly, looking
away from me.
'What does it mean? he said. 'What do
these things mean?'
I gave no answer.
'Why are these things allowed? What
have we done - what has Weybridge done?
The morning service was over. I was walking
the roads to clear my brain, and then - fire
and death! All our work - everything destroyed. The church! We rebuilt it only three
years ago. Gone! Why?'
Another pause, and then he shouted,
'The smoke of her burning goes up for ever
and ever!' His eyes were wide and he pointed
a thin finger in the direction of Weybridge.
It was clear to me that the great
tragedy in which he was involved - it seemed

68/197

that he had escaped from Weybridge - had

driven him to the edge of madness.
'Are we far from Sunbury?' I said, very
quietly.
'What can we do?' he asked. 'Are these
creatures everywhere? Has the Earth been
given to them?'
'Are we far from Sunbury?'
'Only this morning I was in charge of
the church service -'
'Things have changed!' I said, quietly.
'You must stay calm. There is still hope.'
'Hope!'
'Yes, a lot of hope, despite all this destruction. Listen!'
From beyond the low hills across the
water came the dull sound of the distant

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guns and a far-away strange crying. Then

everything was still. High in the west the
moon hung pale above the smoke and the
hot, still beauty of the sunset.
'We had better follow this path,' I said.
'To the north.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

In London
My younger brother was in London
when the Martians fell at Woking. He was a
medical student, working for an examination, and he heard nothing of the arrival until Saturday morning. The morning papers
on Saturday contained, in addition to a great
deal of information about the planet Mars,
one very short report.
The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number of
people with a quick-firing gun, the story said.
It ended with the words, 'Although they seem
frightening, the Martians have not moved

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from the pit into which they have fallen, and

don't seem able to do so.'
Even the afternoon papers had nothing to tell apart from the movement of soldiers around the common, and the burning
of the woods between Woking and Weybridge. Nothing more of the fighting was
known that night, the night of my drive to
Leatherhead and back.
My brother was not worried about us,
as he knew from the description in the papers chat the cylinder was three kilometres
from my house. That night he made up his
mind to visit me, in order to see the Things
before they were killed. He sent a telegram,
which never reached me.
On the Saturday evening, at Waterloo
station, he learned that an accident prevented trains from reaching Woking. He could
not discover what kind of accident it was. In
fact, the people in charge of the railway did

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not clearly know at that time. There was very

little excitement at the station. Few people
connected the problem with the Martians.
I have read, in another description of
these events, that on Sunday morning 'all
London was panicked by the news from
Woking.' In fact, this is simply not true.
Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until Monday morning. Some did, but
they needed time to realize what all the reports in the Sunday papers actually meant.
But most people in London do not read
Sunday papers.
Besides this, Londoners are very used
to feeling safe, and exciting news is so normal in the papers that they could read reports like this without great fear:
At about seven o'clock last night the
Martians came out of the cylinder and,
moving around in metal machines, completely destroyed Woking station and the

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houses around it, and killed around 600 soldiers. No details are known. Machine guns
are completely useless against them, and
field-guns have been put out of action. The
Martians appear to be moving towards
Chertsey. People in West Surrey are very
worried and defences have been built to
slow the Martians' movement towards
London.
No one in London knew what the
Martians looked like, and there was still a
fixed idea that they must be slow: 'crawling',
'moving painfully' - words like these were in
all the earlier reports. But none of them were
written by anyone who had actually seen a
Martian. The Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came in. But
there was almost nothing to tell people until
the government announced that the people
of Walton and Weybridge, and all chat district, were pouring along the roads towards
London.

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My brother went again to Waterloo

station to find out if the line to Woking was
open. There he heard that the Chertsey line
was also closed. He learned that several unusual telegrams had been received in the
morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations,
but that these had suddenly stopped. My
brother could get very little exact information out of them. 'There's fighting going on
around Weybridge,' was all the information
they had.
Quite a number of people who had
been expecting friends to arrive by train were
standing at the station. One man spoke to
my brother.
'There are lots of people coming into
Kingston in carts and things, with boxes and
cases,' he said. 'They come from Weybridge
and Walton, and they said guns have been
heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that soldiers told them to move out at once because

75/197

the Martians are corning. What does it all

mean? The Martians can't get out of their pit,
can they?'
My brother could not tell him.
At about five o'clock the growing
crowd in the station was greatly excited by
the opening of the line between the
SouthEastern and South-Western stations,
which is usually closed. Then trains carrying
large guns and many soldiers passed through
the station, moving towards Kingston. Soon
after that the police arrived and began to
move the crowd out of the station, and my
brother went out into the street again.
On Waterloo Bridge a number of
people were watching an odd brown liquid
that came down the river from time to time.
The sun was just setting and the Houses of
Parliament stood against a peaceful sky.
There was talk of a floating body.

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In Wellington Street my brother met

two men selling newspapers which had just
been printed. The advertising boards said,
'Terrible tragedy! Fighting at Weybridge! Defeat of the Martians! London in danger!' He
bought a paper.
Then, and only then, he understood
something of the full power and terror of the
Martians. He learned that they were not just
a few small crawling creatures, but that they
could control enormous mechanical bodies.
They could move quickly and strike with
such power that even the biggest guns could
not stand against them. They were described
as, 'great machines like spiders, nearly thirty
metres high, as fast as an express train, and
able to shoot out a beam of strong heat.'
Many field-guns, the report said, had
been hidden around the country near Horsell
Common, and especially between the Woking district and London. Five of the

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machines had been seen moving towards the

Thames and one, by a lucky chance, had
been destroyed. In other cases the shells had
missed, and the guns had at once been destroyed by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but in general the report was optimistic.
The Martians had been defeated, my
brother read. They had gone back to their
cylinders again, in the circle around Woking.
Guns, including some very large ones, were
moving in quickly. One hundred and sixteen
were now in position, mainly covering London. There had never been such a large or
fast movement of war equipment in England
before.
No doubt, said the report, the situation was strange and serious, but the public
was asked to avoid and discourage panic. No
doubt the Martians were very frightening,

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but there could not be more than twenty of

them against our millions.
All down Wellington Street people
could be seen reading the paper. Men came
running from buses to get copies. Certainly
people were excited by the news, whatever
they had felt before. A map shop in the
Strand opened specially, and a man in his
Sunday clothes could be seen inside
quickly fixing maps of Surrey to the shop
window.
Going along the Strand to Trafalgar
Square, my brother saw some of the refugees
from West Surrey. There was a man with his
wife and two boys and some pieces of furniture in a cart, and close behind him came
another one with five or six well-dressed
people and some boxes and cases. The faces
of the people showed that they were very
tired. Some distance behind them was a man

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on an old-fashioned bicycle. He was dirty

and white-faced.
My brother turned towards Victoria
station, and met a number of people like
these. He had an idea that he might see me.
He noticed an unusual number of police controlling the traffic. Some of the refugees were
exchanging news with the people on the
buses. Most were excited by their strange experience. My brother spoke to several of the
refugees but none could give him any news
of Woking, except one man who said that it
had been totally destroyed the previous
night.
At that time there was a strong feeling
on the streets that the government should be
blamed because they had not destroyed the
Martians already.
At about eight o'clock the sound of tiring could be heard clearly ail over the south
of London. My brother walked from

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Westminster to his room near Regent's Park.

He was now very worried about me.
There were one or two carts with
refugees going along Oxford Street, but the
news was spreading so slowly that Regent
Street and Portland Place were full of people
taking their usual Sunday night walk. Along
the edge of Regent's Park there were as many
romantic couples as there had ever been. The
night was warm and still. The sound of guns
continued from time to time and after midnight there seemed to be lightning in the
south.
My brother read and reread the paper,
thinking that the worst had happened to me.
He was restless, and after supper went out
again. He returned and tried to concentrate
on his examination notes, but without success. He went to bed a little after midnight
and was woken in the early hours of Monday
morning by the sound of knocking on doors,

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feet running in the street, distant drumming

and the ringing of bells. For a moment he lay
in surprise. Then he jumped out of bed and
ran to the window.
Up and down the street other windows were opening and people were shouting questions. 'They are coming!' a policeman shouted back, banging on the door. 'The
Martians are coming!' Then he hurried to the
next door.
The sound of drums came from the
army base in Albany Street and bells were
ringing in every church. There was a noise of
doors opening, and the lights went on in
window after window in the houses across
the street.
A closed carriage came up the street,
quickly followed by a number of other fastmoving vehicles. Most of them were going to
Chalk Farm station, where special trains
were being loaded.

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For a long time my brother stared out

of the window in total surprise, watching the
policeman banging at door after door. Then
he crossed the room and began to dress, running with each piece of clothing to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing
excitement. And then men selling unusually
early newspapers came shouting into the
street:
'London in danger! Kingston and
Richmond defences broken! Terrible killing
in the Thames Valley!'
All around him - in the rooms below,
in the houses on each side and across the
road, and all across London - people were
rubbing their eyes and opening windows to
stare out and ask questions, and getting
dressed quickly as the first breath of the
coming storm of fear blew through the
streets. It was the beginning of the great panic. London, which had gone to bed on

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Sunday night not knowing much and caring

even less, was woken in the early hours of
Monday morning to a real sense of danger.
Unable to learn what was happening
from his window, my brother went down and
out into the street, just as the sky turned
pink with the dawn. Every moment brought
more and more fast-moving people in
vehicles.
'Black Smoke!' he heard people shouting. 'Black Smoke!' As he stood at the door,
not knowing what to do, he saw another
newspaper-seller approaching him. The man
was running away with the others and selling
his papers for many times their normal price
as he ran - a strange mixture of profit and
panic.
And from this paper my brother read
that terrible report from the commander of
the army:

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The Martians are able to send out

enormous clouds of black smoke. They have
poisoned our gunners, destroyed Richmond,
Kingston and Wimbledon, and are moving
slowly
towards
London,
destroying
everything on the way, It is impossible to
stop them. There is no safety from the Black
Smoke except by running away.
That was all, but it was enough. All of
the six million people who lived in the great
city were beginning to move. Soon everybody
would be trying to escape to the north. 'Black
Smoke!' the voices shouted. 'Fire!'
The bells of the local church rang
loudly, a carelessly-driven cart smashed, and
people screamed and swore. Yellow lights
moved around in the houses. And in the sky
above them, the dawn was growing brighter clear and calm.
He heard people running in the
rooms, and up and down the stairs behind

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him. His neighbour came to the door. She

was not properly dressed and her husband
followed her, shouting.
As my brother began to realize how
serious the situation was, he returned
quickly to his room, put all the money he had
- about ten pounds - into his pockets and
went out again into the streets.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Black Smoke

While the curate had sat and talked so
wildly to me in the flat fields near Walton,
and while my brother was watching the
refugees pour across Westminster Bridge,
the Martians had started to attack again. As
it was reported later, most of them remained
busy with preparations in the pit on Horsell
Common until nine that night, doing
something that produced a great amount of
Black Smoke.
But three certainly came out at about
eight o'clock. They moved forwards slowly
and carefully towards Ripley and Weybridge,
and so came in sight of the waiting guns.

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These Martians moved in a line, perhaps two

kilometres apart. They communicated with
each other by loud howls.
It was this howling and the firing of
the guns at Ripley and Weybridge that we
heard at Walton. The Ripley gunners had
never been in action before. The guns fired
one ineffective shell each, then the soldiers
ran away. The Martian, without using his
Heat-Ray, walked calmly over their guns.
The Weybridge men, however, were
better led or were more experienced. Hidden
by a wood, it seems they were not noticed by
the Martian nearest to them. They aimed
their guns well and fired at a distance of
about one kilometre.
The shells exploded all round it. and it
was seen to move forwards a few steps, and
go down. The guns were reloaded quickly.
The fallen Martian used its voice, and immediately a second one answered it, appearing

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over the trees to the south. It seemed that

one of its three legs had been broken. All of
the second shells missed the Martian on the
ground and, immediately.
The other Martians used their HeatRays on the guns. The shells blew up, the
trees all around the guns caught fire and only
one or two of the men escaped.
After this it seemed that the three
Martians spoke together, and those who
were watching them report that they stayed
absolutely quiet for the next half-hour. The
fallen Martian crawled slowly out of its machine and began to repair its leg. By about
nine it had finished, and the machine was
seen to move again.
A few minutes later these three were
joined by four other Martians, each carrying
a thick black tube. A similar tube was given
to each of the three, and the seven spread out

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at equal distances along a curved line

between Weybridge and Ripley.
A dozen signal lights went on as soon
as they began to move, warning the waiting
guns around Esher. At the same time four of
the fighting-machines, also carrying tubes,
crossed the river, and two of them, black
against the western sky, came into sight of
myself and the curate as we hurried along
the road to the north.
When he saw them, the curate made a
frightened noise and began running, but I
knew it was no good running from a Martian
and I crawled into some bushes by the side
of the road. He looked back and turned to
join me.
We heard the distant sound of a gun,
then another nearer, and then another. And
then the Martian closest to us raised his tube
and fired it towards the guns, with a loud
bang that made the ground shake. The other

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one did the same. There was no flash, no

smoke, simply a loud noise.
[I was so excited by all this that I completely forgot about my persona] safety and
raised my head out of the bushes. As I did, I
heard another bang and something flew fast
over my head. I expected at least to see
smoke or fire, but there was only the deepblue sky above and one single star. There had
been no explosion, no answer from the guns.
Silence returned, and three minutes passed.
'What's happened?' said the curate,
standing up.
'I've no idea,' I answered.
I looked again at the Martian, and saw
that it was now moving east along the river
bank. Every moment I expected a hidden
gun to fire at it, but the evening calm was unbroken. The figure of the Martian grew smaller as it moved away, and soon it was hidden

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by the mist and the coming night. The curate

and I climbed higher up the hill and looked
around. Towards Sunbury there was
something dark, like a hill, hiding our view of
the country further away. Then, far across
the river, we saw another, similar hill. These
hills grew lower and broader as we stared.
I had a sudden thought and looked to
the north, and there I saw a third of these
cloudy black hills.
Everything had become very still. Far
away to the north-east we heard the Martians calling to each other, but our guns were
silent.
At the time we could not understand
these things, but later I learnt the meaning of
these frightening black hills. Each of the
Martians, standing in the great curve I have
described, had used the tube he carried to
fire a large cylinder over whatever hill, wood
or other possible hiding-place for guns might

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be in front of him. Some fired only one of

these, some two or more. These broke when
they hit the ground - they did not explode and let out an enormous amount of thick
Black Smoke. This rose up in a cloud shaped
like a hill, then sank and spread itself slowly
over the surrounding country. And it was
death to breathe that smoke.
It was heavy, this smoke, so when it
began to sink down it behaved like a liquid,
running down hills and into the valleys. And
where it met with water, or even mist or wet
grass, a chemical action took place and it
turned into a powder that sank slowly and
made room for more.
When the smoke had begun to settle,
it stayed quite close to the ground so that
even fifteen metres up in the air, on the roots
and upper floors of houses and in high trees,
there was a chance of escaping its poison. A
man later told me that he had watched from

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a church roof as the smoke filled his village.

For a day and a half he stayed up there, tired,
hungry and burnt by the sun before it was
safe to come down. But that was in a village
where the Black Smoke was allowed to remain until it sank into the ground. Usually,
when it had done its work, the Martian
cleared the air by blowing steam at it.
They did this to the black clouds near
us, as we saw in the starlight from the upper
window of an empty house. From there we
could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill
and Kingston Hill moving in the sky, and at
about eleven the windows shook, and we
heard the sound of the large guns that had
been put in position there. These continued
for a quarter of an hour, firing blindly at
Martians too far away to be seen. Then the
fourth cylinder fell - a bright green star to the
north-east.

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So, doing it methodically, as a man

might kill insects, the Martians spread this
strange killing smoke over the country towards London. The ends of the curve slowly
moved apart, until at last they formed a line
about twelve kilometres long.
All through the night their tubes
moved forwards. They never gave the guns
any chance against them. Wherever there
was a possibility of guns being hidden, they
fired a cylinder of Black Smoke at them, and
where the guns could be seen they used the
Heat-Ray.
By midnight the burning trees along
the slopes of Richmond Hill lit up clouds of
Black Smoke which covered the whole valley
of the Thames, and went as far as the eye
could see.
They only used the Heat-Ray from
time to time that night, either because they
had a limited supply of material for its

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production or because they did not want to

destroy the country, but only to defeat its
people. They certainly succeeded. Sunday
night was the end of organized opposition to
their movement.
After that no group of men would
stand against them, because this would mean
almost certain death.
You have to imagine what happened
to the gunners towards Esher, waiting so
tensely in the evening light, because none of
them lived to tell the story. You can see the
quiet expectation, the officers watching, the
gunners waiting with their horses, the
groups of local people standing as near as
they were allowed, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burnt and wounded from
Weybridge. Then came the dull noise of the
shots that the Martians fired, and the cylinder flying over the trees and houses and
breaking in the neighbouring fields.

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You can imagine, too, how they

watched as the blackness rose into the sky.
The men and horses near it were seen running, screaming, falling down. There were
shouts of fear, the guns suddenly left behind,
men on the ground struggling to breathe,
and the fast spreading of the dark smoke - a
silent black cloud hiding its dead.
Before dawn the Black Smoke was
pouring through the streets of Richmond.
The government, already falling apart, made
one last effort. It told the people of London
that they had to run away.

CHAPTER NINE

Escape
You can understand the wave of fear
that swept through the greatest city in the
world at dawn on Monday morning. People
ran to the railway stations, to the boats on
the Thames, and hurried by even street that
went north or east. By ten o'clock the police
were finding it hard to keep control.
All the railway lines north of the
Thames had been warned by midnight on
Sunday, and trains were being filled. Passengers were fighting for standing room in the
carriages even at two o'clock in the morning.
By three the crowds were so large around the
stations that people were being pushed over

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and walked on. Guns were fired and knives

were used. The police who had been sent to
direct the traffic, exhausted and angry, were
fighting with the people they had been called
out to protect.
And as time passed and the engine
drivers and firemen refused to return to London, the people turned in growing crowds
away from the stations and onto the roads
running north. By midday a cloud of slowly
sinking Black Smoke had moved along the
Thames, cutting off all escape across the
bridges. Another cloud came over Ealing,
and surrounded a little island of people on
Castle Hill, alive but unable to escape.
After trying unsuccessfully to get onto
a train at Chalk Farm my brother came out
into the road, pushed through the hurrying
lines of vehicles, and had the luck to be at the
front of a crowd which was taking bicycles
from a shop. He got his hands on one. He put

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a hole in its front tyre while he was pulling it

through the broken window, and cut his
wrist, but he managed to get away on it. The
foot of Haverstock Hill was blocked by fallen
horses, but my brother got onto the Belsize
Road.
So he escaped from the worst of the
panic in London and reached Edgware at
about seven. A kilometre before the village
the front wheel of the bicycle broke. He left it
at the roadside and walked on. People there
were standing on the pavement, looking in
surprise at the growing crowds of refugees.
He succeeded in getting some food at a pub.
My brother had some friends in
Chelmsford, and this perhaps made him take
the road that ran to the east. He saw few other refugees until he met the two ladies who
later travelled with him. He arrived just in
time to save them.

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He heard their screams and, hurrying

round the corner, saw a couple of men trying
to pull them out of the little cart which they
had been driving, while a third held onto the
frightened horse's head. One of the ladies, a
short woman dressed in white, was screaming. The other, younger one was hitting the
man who held her arm with a whip.
My brother shouted and ran towards
them. One of the men turned towards him.
Realizing from his face that a fight was unavoidable, and being a good boxer, my brother hit him hard and knocked him back onto
the wheel of the cart.
It was no time for fair fighting, and
my brother quietened him with a kick, then
took hold of the collar of the man who held
the younger lady's arm. He heard the horse
move forwards and then the third man hit
him between the eyes. The man he held

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pulled himself free and ran off down the road

in the direction from which he had come.
Still recovering, my brother found
himself facing the man who had held the
horse's head, and realized that the cart was
moving away along the road. The man, who
looked very well built, tried to move in
closer, but my brother hit him in the face.
Then, realizing that he was alone, he ran
along the road after the cart, with the big
man behind him. The man who had run
away had now stopped and turned and was
following my brother at a greater distance.
Suddenly, my brother fell. The big
man tripped over him, and when my brother
got to his feet he found himself facing both of
them. He would have had very little chance if
the younger lady had not very bravely
stopped the cart and returned to help him. It
seemed that she had had a gun all the time,
but it had been under her seat when they

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were attacked. She fired from six metres

away, narrowly missing my brother. The less
brave of the two attackers ran away, and the
other one followed cursing him. They both
stopped further down the road, where the
third man lay unconscious.
'Take this!' the younger lady said, and
she gave my brother the gun.
'Let's go back to the cart,' said my
brother, wiping the blood from his lip.
They walked to where the lady in
white was struggling to hold the frightened
horse. My brother looked back along the
road. The robbers had had enough and were
moving away.
'I'll sit here,' he said, 'if I may,' and he
got up on the front seat. The younger lady sat
beside him and made the horse move.

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My brother learned that the two women were the wife and younger sister of a
doctor living in Stanmore, The doctor had
heard about the Martians at the railway station, on his way home from seeing a patient,
and had sent them off, promising to follow
after telling the neighbours. He said he
would catch up with them by about half-past
four in the morning, but it was now nearly
nine and there was no sign of him.
They stopped and waited for a few
hours, but the doctor did not appear. The
younger woman suggested that they should
move on and catch a train at St Albans. My
brother, who had seen the situation at the
stations in London, thought that was hopeless. He suggested that they should drive
across Essex to the sea at Harwich, and from
there get right out of the country.
Mrs Elphinstone - that was the name
of the woman in white - refused to listen to

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his argument, and kept calling for 'George',

but her sister-in-law was very quiet and
sensible and agreed to my brother's suggestion. So, intending to cross the Great North
Road, they went on towards Barnet. As they
got closer they saw- more and more people,
all tired and dirty. They also noticed a long
line of dust rising among the houses in front
of them. There was a sharp bend in the road,
less than fifty metres from the crossroads.
When they came out of it Mrs Elphinstone
said. 'Good heavens! What is this you are
driving us into'"
My brother stopped the horse.
The main road was a boiling stream of
people, a river of human beings rushing to
the north. A great cloud of dust, white under
the strong sun, made everything within five
metres of the ground grey and unclear. More
dust was raised all the time by the thick

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crowd of men and women, horses and

vehicles.
'Go on! Go on!' the voices said.
'They're coming.'
It seemed that the whole population
of London was moving north. There were
people of every class and profession, but they
were all dusty; their skins were dry, their lips
black and cracked, and all of them looked
very afraid.
My brother saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes.
'Let's go back!' he shouted. 'We cannot
cross this.'
They went back a hundred metres in
the direction they had come. As they passed
the bend in the road, my brother saw a man
lying not far away. His face was white and

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shining. It was clear that he was near death.

The two women sat in silence.
Beyond the bend my brother changed
his mind. He turned to Miss Elphinstone.
'We must go that way,' he said, and turned
the horse round again.
For the second time that day the girl
showed her courage. My brother went into
the crowd and stopped a horse pulling a cart,
while she drove in front of it. In another moment they were caught and swept forwards
with the stream of vehicles. My brother, with
red whip-marks on his face and hands from
the cart's driver, got up into the driving seat.
'Point the gun at the man behind,' he
said, giving it to her,'it he pushes us too
hard. No - point it at his horse.'
Then they began to look for a chance
of getting to the right side of the road. But as
soon as they were in the stream of vehicles,

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there was little they could do. They were

taken through Barnet and were more than a
kilometre beyond the centre of the town before they could fight their way across to the
other side of the road.
They turned to the east and climbed a
hill. There they stopped for the rest of the afternoon, because they were all exhausted.
They were beginning to feel very
hungry and the night was cold. In the evening many people came hurrying along the
road near their stopping-place, escaping
from unknown dangers and going in the direction from which my brother had come.

CHAPTER TEN

The Thunder Child

If the Martians had only wanted destruction, they could have killed the whole
population of London on Monday, as it
moved out slowly through the neighbouring
countryside. It one had flown over London
that morning, every road to the north or east
would have seemed black with moving
refugees, everyone a frightened and exhausted human being.
None of the wars of history had such
an effect - six million people, moving without
weapons or food or any real sense of direction. It was the start of the death of the human race.

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And over the blue hills to the south of

the river, the Martians moved backwards
and forwards, calmly spreading their poison
clouds over one piece of country and then
over another. They destroyed any weapons
they found and wrecked the railways here
and there. They seemed in no hurry, and did
not go beyond the central part of London all
that day. It is possible that many people
stayed in their houses through Monday
morning. It is certain that many died at
home, killed by the Black Smoke.
Until about midday there were still
many ships on the Thames, attracted by the
enormous sums of money offered by
refugees. It is said that many who swam out
to these ships were pushed away and
drowned. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, the thin remains of a cloud of Black
Smoke was seen coming through London's
Blackfriars Bridge. This caused a terrible
panic and all the ships and boats tried to

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leave at the same time. Many became stuck

together under Tower Bridge, and the sailors
had to fight against people who tried to get
on from the riverside. People were actually
climbing down onto the boats from the
bridge above.
When, an hour later, a Martian
walked down the river, there was nothing but
broken pieces of boats in the water.
I will tell you later about the falling of
the fifth cylinder. The sixth one fell in
Wimbledon. My brother, watching beside the
women in the cart in the field, saw the green
flash of it far beyond the hills. On Tuesday
the three of them, still intending to get out to
sea, drove through the busy country towards
Colchester.
That day the refugees began to realize
how much they needed food. As they grew
hungry, they began to steal. Farmers defended their animals and crops with guns in

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their hands. A number of people now, like

my brother, were moving to the east, and
some were even so desperate that they
turned back towards London to get food.
These were mainly people from the northern
suburbs who had only heard of, but not seen,
the Black Smoke.
My brother heard that about half the
members of the government had met in
Birmingham, in central England, and that
enormous amounts of explosive were being
prepared to be used in the Midlands. He was
told that the Midland Railway Company had
started running trains again, and was taking
people north from St Albans. There was also
a notice which said that within twenty-four
hours bread would be given to the hungry
people. But this did not change their plans,
and they continued travelling east. They
heard no more about the bread than this notice, and nobody else did either.

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That night the seventh cylinder fell in

London, on Primrose Hill.
On Wednesday my brother and the
two women reached Chelmsford, and there a
number of people, calling themselves the
Council of Public Safety, took their horse for
food. Although the three of them were
hungry themselves, they decided to walk on.
After several more hours on the road,
they suddenly saw the sea and the most
amazing crowd of ships of all types that it is
possible to imagine.
After the sailors could no longer come
up the Thames, they went to the towns on
the Essex coast to take people onto their
ships. Close to the shore was a large number
of fishing-boats from various countries, and
steamboats from the Thames. Beyond these
were the larger ships - a great number of coal
ships, ships carrying goods, and neat white

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and grey passenger ships from Southampton

and Hamburg.
About three kilometres out there was
a warship. This was the Thunder Child, the
only one in sight, but far away to the right a
column of smoke marked the position of other warships. These waited in a long line,
ready for action, right across the mouth of
the Thames, watching the Martian attack but
powerless to prevent it.
At the sight of the sea Mrs Elphmstone panicked. She had never been out of
England before; she would rather die than be
friendless in a foreign country. She had been
growing increasingly upset and depressed
during the two days' journey. Her great idea
was to return to Stanmore. Things had always been safe in Stanmore. They would find
George in Stanmore.
It was very difficult to get her down to
the beach, where after some time my brother

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caught the attention of some men from a

steamboat. They sent a small boat and
agreed on a price of thirty-six pounds for the
three passengers. The steamboat was going,
these men said, to the Belgian port of
Ostend.
It was about two o'clock when my
brother got onto it with the two women.
There was food available, although the prices
were very high, and the three of them had a
meal.
There were already around forty passengers on the boat, some of whom had
spent their last money getting a ticket, but
the captain stayed until five in the afternoon,
picking up passengers until the boat was
dangerously crowded. He would probably
have stayed longer it the sound or guns had
not begun at about that time in the south.
The Thunder Child, too, fired a small gun
and sent up a string of flags. Some smoke

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rose as its engines started. At the same time,

far away in the south-east, the shapes of
three warships appeared, beneath clouds of
smoke.
The little steamboat was already moving out to sea, when a Martian appeared,
small and far away, moving along the muddy
coast from the south. The captain swore at
the top of his voice at his own delay, and the
ship increased speed.
It was the first Martian that my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed than
frightened, as it moved steadily towards the
ships, walking further and further into the
water. Then, far away, another appeared,
stepping over some small trees, and then another could be seen even further away, crossing the flat mud that lay between the sea and
the sky.
Looking to the north-east, my brother
saw the long line of ships already moving

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away from the approaching terror. One ship

was passing behind another; many were
turning. Steamships whistled and sent up
clouds of steam, sails were let out and small
boats rushed here and there. He was so interested in this that he did not look out to
sea. And then a quick movement of the
steamboat (which had turned to avoid being
hit) threw him off the seat on which he had
been standing. There was shouting all
around him. a movement of feet and a cheer
that seemed to be answered.
He got to his feet and saw to the right,
less than a hundred metres away, the warship cutting through the water at full speed,
throwing enormous waves out on either side.
Some water came over the side of the
steamboat and blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear again, the
warship had passed and was rushing towards
the land. He looked past it at the Martians

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again and saw the three of them now close

together, and standing so far out to sea that
their legs were almost completely under
water.
It seemed to him that they were surprised by this new enemy. To their minds,
perhaps, no other machine could be as large
as themselves. The Thunder Child fired no
gun, but simply sailed at full speed towards
them. Probably because it did not fire, it
managed to get quite close. They did not
know what it was. If the ship had fired one
shell, they would have sent it straight to the
bottom with the Heat-Ray.
Suddenly, the nearest Martian
lowered his tube and fired a cylinder at the
Thunder Child. This hit its left side and sent
up a black cloud that the ship moved away
from. To the watchers on the steamboat, low
in the water and with the sun in their eyes, it

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seemed that the warship was already among

the Martians.
They saw the three thin figures separating and rising out of the water as they
moved back towards the shore, and one of
them raised the box that fired his Heat-Ray.
He held it pointing down, and a cloud of
steam came up from the water as it hit the
ship.
A flame rose up through the steam
and then the Martian began to fall over. In
another moment it had hit the sea, and a
great amount of water and steam flew high
in the air. The guns of the Thunder Child
were heard going off one after another, and
one shot hit the water close by the
steamboat.
No one worried about that very much.
As the Martian fell, the captain shouted and
all the crowded passengers at the back of the
steamer joined in. And then he shouted

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again. Because rushing out beyond the

smoke and steam came something long and
black with flames coming from it.
The warship could stilt turn and its
engines worked. It went straight towards a
second Martian, and was within a hundred
metres of it when the Heat-Rav hit it. There
was a violent bang, a blinding flash and the
warship blew up. The Martian was thrown
back by the violence of the explosion, and in
another moment the burning wreckage, still
moving forwards, had broken the Martian
like something made of wood. My brother
shouted. A boiling cloud of steam hid
everything again.
'Two!' shouted the captain.
Everyone was shouting and they could
hear shouts and cheers from the other ships
and the boats. The steam stayed in the air for
many minutes, hiding the third Martian and
the coast. All this time the steamboat was

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moving steadily out to sea and away from the

fight, and when at last the steam cleared, the
black cloud got in the way and they could see
nothing of either the Thunder Child or the
third Martian. But the other warships were
now quite close and moving in towards the
shore.
The little ship my brother was on continued to move out to sea, and the warships
became smaller in the distance.
Then suddenly, out of the golden sunset, came the sound of guns and the sight of
black shadows moving. Everyone moved to
the side of the steamboat and looked to the
west, but smoke rose and blocked the sun.
Nothing could be seen clearly. The ship travelled on while the passengers wondered.
The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky
darkened and an evening star came into
sight. Then the captain cried out and pointed. Something rushed up into the sky,

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something flat and broad and very large, and

flew in a great curve. It grew smaller, sank
slowly and disappeared again into the night.
And as it flew, it rained down darkness on
the land.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Earth Under the Martians

In the last two chapters I have moved
away from my own adventures to tell of the
experiences of my brother. All through this
time I and the curate had been hiding in the
empty house where we went to escape the
Black Smoke. We stayed there all Sunday
night and all the next day - the day of the
panic - in a little island of daylight, cut off by
the Black Smoke from the rest of the world.
We could only wait and be bored during
those two days.
I was very worried about my wife. I
thought of her in Leatherhead, frightened, in
danger, thinking of me already as a dead

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man. I knew my cousin was brave enough for

any emergency, but he was not the sort of
man to understand danger quickly and do
something about it. These worries stayed on
my mind and I grew very tired of the curate's
constant talking. After trying and failing to
keep him quiet, I kept away from him in other rooms in the house.
We were surrounded by the Black
Smoke all that day and the following morning. There were signs of people in the next
house on Sunday evening - a face at a window and moving lights, and later the closing
of a door. But I do not know who these
people were or what happened to them. We
saw nothing of them the next day. The Black
Smoke moved slowly towards the river all
through Monday morning, slowly getting
nearer and nearer to us, coming at last along
the road outside the house that hid us.

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A Martian walked across the fields at

about midday, killing the stuff with steam.
When we looked out I saw the country
covered with black dust, but we were no
longer trapped. As soon as I saw that escape
was possible, my dream of action returned.
But the curate did not want to leave.
'We are safe here - safe here,' he
repeated.
I decided to leave him. The soldier
had taught me well and I looked for food and
drink and a spare shirt to take with me.
When it was clear to the curate that I intended to go alone, he suddenly decided to
come. Everything was quiet through the afternoon and we started at about five o'clock
along the blackened road to Sunbury.
Here and there along the road, and in
Sunbury itself, were dead bodies of horses as
well as men, turned-over carts and luggage,
all covered thickly with black dust. As we

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passed other small towns, we found them

unaffected by either Heat-Ray or Black
Smoke, and there were some people alive, although none could give us news. Here too,
there were signs of quick departure. I remember a pile of three broken bicycles,
flattened by the wheels of passing carts. We
crossed Richmond Bridge at about half-past
eight. Once again, on the Surrey side, there
was black dust that had once been smoke,
and some dead bodies - a number of them
near the approach to the station.
Then suddenly, as we walked north,
we saw some people running. The top of a
Martian fighting-machine came into sight
over the house tops, less than a hundred
metres away from us. We stood shocked by
our danger, and if the Martian had been
looking down we would have died immediately. We were too frightened to go on and
hid in a hut in a garden. There the curate lay

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down, crying silently and refusing to move

again.
But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the evening I went out again. I left the curate in the
hut, but he came hurrying after me.
That second start was the most foolish
thing I ever did. It was obvious that the Martians were all around us. As soon as the curate caught up with me, we saw either the
fighting-machine we had seen before or another one, far away across the fields. Four or
five little black figures hurried in front of it,
and in a moment it became obvious that this
Martian was hunting them. In three steps it
was among them, and they ran away in all
directions. It did not use its Heat-Ray, but
picked them up one by one and threw them
into a large metal box which stuck out behind it.

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For the first time, I realized that perhaps the Martians had another purpose,
apart from destroying human beings. We
stood for a moment in terror, then ran
through a gate behind us into a garden and
hid in a corner until the stars were out.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before we
felt brave enough to go out again. We kept
away from the road, moving through gardens
and some areas full of trees. When we got to
Sheen, the curate said that he felt unwell and
we decided to try one of the houses.
The one we chose was in a walled
garden, and in the kitchen we found some
food. There were two loaves of bread, a raw
steak and some cooked meat. Under a shelf
we found some bottled beer, and there were
two bags of green beans and some lettuce. In
a cupboard there was some tinned soup and
fish and two tins of cake. I am listing these

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exactly because we lived on this food for the

next fortnight.
We sat in the kitchen in the dark and
had a meal of cold food, and just before midnight there was a blinding flash of green light
followed by the loudest bang I have ever
heard. There was a crash of glass, the sound
of falling walls, and then the ceiling fell down
in pieces on our heads. I was knocked across
the floor and my head hit the oven. I lay
there unconscious for a long time, the curate
told me, and when I woke up he was wiping
my face with a wet handkerchief.
For some time I could not remember
what had happened.
'Are you better?' he asked.
At last I answered him. I sat up.
'Don't move,' he said. 'The floor is
covered with broken plates. You can't

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possibly move without making a noise, and I

think they are outside.'
We both sat in complete silence, so we
could hardly hear each other breathing. Outside and very near was the noise from a machine, which started and stopped.
'What is it?' I asked.
'A Martian!' said the curate.
Our situation was so strange and unbelievable that for three or four hours, until
the dawn came, we hardly moved. And then
the light came, not through the window,
which was filled with earth from the garden,
but through a small hole that had been
knocked in the wall. Through this we saw the
body of a Martian, watching a cylinder which
was still red with heat. When we saw that, we
moved as slowly as possible out of the grey
light of the kitchen and into the darkness of
the hall.

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Suddenly, the truth came to me.

'The fifth cylinder!' I whispered. 'It's
hit this house and buried us under the ruins!'
For a time the curate was silent, then
he said, 'God help us!'
For hours we lay there in the darkness, while from outside came the sounds of
hammering and then, after some time, a
sound like an engine. Towards the end of the
day I found that I was very hungry. I told the
curate that I was going to look for food, and
moved back into the kitchen again. He did
not answer, but as soon as I began eating I
heard him crawling towards me.
After eating we went back to the hall,
and I fell asleep. When I woke up and looked
around I was alone. I crawled back into the
kitchen and saw him lying down and looking
out of the hole at the Martians.

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The noises still continued. Through

the hole I could see the top of a tree, turned
to gold by the evening sun. I stepped carefully through the broken plates that covered
the floor.
I touched the curate's leg, and he
moved so suddenly that some bricks slid
down outside with a loud crash. I took hold
of his arm, afraid that he might cry out, and
for a long time we remained still. Then I
raised my head cautiously to see what had
happened. The falling bricks had left another
hole in the wall of the building. Through this
I was able to see into what had been, only the
previous night, a quiet road. Things had
changed greatly.
The fifth cylinder had not fallen on
our house, but on top of the house next door.
The building had completely disappeared.
The cylinder had gone right through it and
made a large hole in the ground, much larger

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than the pit I had looked into in Woking. The

earth all around had been thrown up over
the neighbouring houses. Our house had
fallen backwards. The front part of it had
been destroyed completely. By chance the
kitchen had escaped and now stood buried
under earth and bricks, covered on every
side except towards the cylinder. We now lay
on the very edge of the enormous round pit
that the Martians were making.
The cylinder was already open in the
centre of the pit, and on the furthest side one
of the great fighting-machines, empty now,
stood tall and unmoving against the evening
sky. However, at first I hardly noticed the pit
and the cylinder, because of the strange shining machine that I saw working there, and
the odd creatures that were crawling slowly
and painfully across the earth near it.
This machine was shaped like a spider
with five legs and a great number of

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tentacles. With these it was taking pieces of

metal out of the cylinder and laying them on
the earth behind it. It was doing this so
quickly and perfectly that I did not see it as a
machine at first. The fighting-machines were
extraordinary, but could not compare to this
building-machine. People who have never
seen these things can hardly understand how
alive they looked.
I had seen the Martians themselves
once before, but only for a short time, and
then the sight had almost made me sick.
Now I was more used to them, and was in a
good position with a lot of time to study
them properly. They were the strangest
creatures it is possible to imagine. They had
large, round bodies - or perhaps heads about a metre and a half across. Each body
had a face in front of it. This face had no
nose - I do not think they had any sense of
smell - but it had a pair of very large, dark
eyes, and just beneath these a kind of v-

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shaped mouth. In the back of the head, or

body - I do not really know what to call it there was a flat surface like the skin of a
drum, which we now know worked as an ear.
Around the mouth were sixteen thin, whiplike tentacles, arranged in two groups of
eight. These worked like hands.
As I watched the Martians, they
seemed to be trying to raise themselves on
the hands, but with their increased weight on
Earth this was impossible. It may be that on
Mars they moved around on them quite
easily.
Most of the space inside their bodies
was taken by the brain. Besides this they had
a heart, but they had no stomach because
they did not eat. Instead, they took fresh
blood from living creatures and used a tube
to put it straight into their own bodies. This
idea seems horrible to us, but at the same
time I think we should remember how

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disgusting our meat-eating habits would

seem to an intelligent rabbit.
In three other ways their bodies were
different from ours. They did not sleep, and
because they had very simple bodies they
never seemed to get tired. On Earth they
could not move without effort, but even at
the end of their time here they remained active. In twenty-four hours they did twentyfour hours of work.
Also, strange as it may seem, the Martians were absolutely without sex. A young
Martian, we now know, was born on Earth
during the war, and it was found growing out
of the body of its parent, just like some
young plants.
A final difference seems very unimportant. Germs, which cause so much disease and pain on Earth, have either never appeared on Mars or they got rid of them a long
time ago.

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It is generally supposed that the Martians communicated by sounds and by moving their arms. But no human being saw as
much of them as I did and lived to tell the
story, and I can say that I have seen four, five
or six of them slowly performing the most
difficult work without sound or any other
signal. I know a little of psychology and I am
absolutely certain that they exchanged
thoughts.
While I was still watching their slow
movements in the sunlight, the curate pulled
violently at my arm. I turned and saw an unhappy face and silent, moving lips. He
wanted to see what was happening. The hole
was only big enough for one of us to look
through, so I had to stop watching them for a
time while he had his chance.
When I looked again, the busy
building-machine had already put together
several of the pieces of metal from inside the

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cylinder into a shape that was very like its

own. Down on the left a busy little diggingmachine could be seen, sending out small
clouds of green smoke and working its way
round the pit, making it bigger and piling the
earth up over the top. This was what had
caused the regular heating noise. It whistled
as it worked, and no Martian seemed to be
controlling it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the Ruined House

The arrival of a second fighting-machine made us move back out of the kitchen
into the hall, because we were afraid that
from that height the Martian might see us
through the hole. At a later date we began to
feel less in danger of being seen because the
sunlight outside was very bright, but at first
anything approaching the house drove us
back into the hall in fear. However, despite
the danger, we could not prevent ourselves
from going back to look again and again. In
our desire to watch, we even fought each other within a few centimetres of being seen.

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We were very different people with

different habits of thought and action, and
those differences increased because we were
living together in this dangerous place. The
curate talked endlessly, and this prevented
me from forming a plan of action.
He had no self-control at all and
sometimes cried for hours at a time. He ate
more than I did, and did not seem to understand that we had to stay in the house until
the Martians had finished their work if we
wanted to stay alive. I tried threatening him,
and in the end I hit him. That worked for
some time.
The curate was watching through the
hole when the first men were brought there.
I was sitting near him, listening hard. He
made a sudden movement backwards and
for a moment I shared his panic. Then curiosity gave me courage and I got up, stepped
across him and went to the hole.

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At first I could see no reason for his

behaviour. The night was coming but the
Martians had lights on their machines. The
whole scene was one of moving lights and
shadows, difficult for the eyes. The Martians
at the bottom of the pit could no longer be
seen, because the earth around it was now so
high. A fighting- machine stood in the corner
of the pit. Then, through the noise of the machinery, came the faint sound of human
voices.
I watched the fighting-machine
closely, sure for the first time that it did actually contain a Martian. I could see the oily
shine of its skin and the brightness of its
eyes. And suddenly I heard a shout and saw a
long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of
the machine to the little cage on its back.
Then something - something struggling violently - was lifted high against the sky and
brought down again. I saw that it was a man.
He was fat, red- faced, middle-aged, well-

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dressed; perhaps earlier he had been important. He disappeared behind the pile of earth
and for a moment there was silence. Then we
heard him scream and the sound of long and
cheerful calling from the Martians.
I moved away from the hole, put my
hands over my ears and ran into the hall. The
curate, who had been lying silently with his
arms over his head, looked up as I passed,
cried out quite loudly and came running
after me.
That night, as we hid in the hall, I felt
a great need to do something but could think
of no plan of escape. But afterwards, during
the second day, I was able to consider our
position clearly. The curate, I found, was
quite unable to discuss anything. The death
of the man outside had taken away all his
powers of thought. He had almost sunk to
the level of an animal. I began to think that,
although our position was terrible, there was

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no reason yet to give up hope. The Martians

might only stay in this pit for a short time,
then move on. Or if they stayed permanently,
they might not think it necessary to watch it
all the time.
On the third day, if I remember correctly, I saw a boy killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the Martians
feed. After that I avoided the hole in the wall
for most of a day.
The Martians had made such an impression on me that at first I did not think I
could escape. I did not think that they could
be defeated by human beings. But on the
fourth or fifth night I heard a sound like
heavy guns.
It was very late and the moon was
shining brightly. The Martians had taken
away the digging-machine and apart from
the fighting-machine on the far side of the
pit and a building- machine that was busy

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out of my sight, the pit was empty. I heard a

dog, and that familiar sound made me listen.
Then I heard a noise exactly like the sound of
big guns. I heard six bangs and then six
more. And that was all.
On the sixth day of our imprisonment
I looked out for the last time, and I soon
found myself alone. Instead of staying close
and trying to move me away from the pit, the
curate had gone back into the hall. I followed
him quickly and quietly and in the darkness I
heard him drinking. I put my hand out and
my fingers closed around a bottle of wine.
For a few minutes we fought together.
The bottle hit the floor and broke, and I
stopped fighting and got up. We stood
breathing heavily, staring at each other. In
the end I moved between him and the food
and told him that I was going to take control.
I divided the food in the cupboard into separate amounts to last us ten days. I

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would not let him eat any more that day. In

the afternoon he tried to get some food. I had
been asleep but in a moment I was awake.
All day and all night we sat face to face. I was
tired but would not give up, and he cried and
complained about his immediate hunger.
The rest of the time he just talked to himself,
and I began to realize that he had gone completely mad.
Through the eighth and ninth days his
voice grew louder. He threatened me, begged
me, and this was mixed with a great deal of
talk about his service to God. Then he slept
for some time and began again with even
more strength, so loudly that I had to try to
stop him.
'Be still!' I demanded.
He rose to his knees. 'I have been still
too long,' he said, loud enough for the Martians to hear, 'and now I must tell the world.

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This place will be destroyed because of the

bad things we have done!'
'Shut up!' I said, getting to my feet.
'Please -'
'No!' he shouted, at the top of his
voice. 'Speak! The word of God is with me!'
In three steps he was at the door leading to the kitchen.
I went after him, picking up the coalhammer as I entered the room. Before he
was half-way across the floor, I was right behind him. I swung the hammer and hit him
on the back of the head. He fell forwards and
lay flat on the floor. I stepped over him and
stood there breathing hard. He did not move.
Suddenly, I heard a noise outside and
the hole in the wall became dark. I looked up
and saw the lower part of a building- machine coming slowly across it. Then, through

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a sort of glass plate, I saw the large, dark

eyes of a Martian, and one of its tentacles appeared, moving in through the hole.
I turned, tripped over the curate and
stopped at the hall door. The tentacle was
now two metres or more into the room, moving backwards and forwards with strange,
sudden movements. I forced myself back into the hall. I shook violently and could hardly
stand straight. Had the Martian seen me?
What was it doing now?
Then I heard the sound of a heavy
body - I knew whose it was - being dragged
across the floor of the kitchen towards the
opening. I could not stop myself - I moved to
the door and looked back into the kitchen. In
the light from outside, I saw the Martian
studying the curate's head. I thought at once
that it would know that I was there from the
mark of the hammer.

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I shut the door and moved back into

the hall and tried to hide myself in the
corner. Then I heard a faint metallic sound
as the tentacle moved back across the kitchen floor. I thought that it might not be
long enough to reach me. I prayed. Then I
heard it touching the handle. It had found
the door. The Martians understood doors!
It moved the handle up and down for
a moment, and then the door opened.
In the darkness I could just see the
thing moving towards me and examining the
wall and the floor. It was like a black snake
moving its head from side to side.
Once, even, it touched my boot. I almost screamed, but I bit my hand. For a time
it did not move, then it moved back through
the door.

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I heard it go into the food cupboard, It

moved the tins and a bottle broke. Then
there was silence.
Had it gone?
At last I decided that it had.
The tentacle did not come into the hall
again, but I lay all the tenth day in the darkness, too frightened even to move for a drink.
I did not enter the kitchen again for two
days. When at last I did, I found that the
food cupboard was now empty. The Martians
had taken everything. On that day and the
next I had no food and nothing to drink.
On the twelfth day my thirst was so
bad that I went into the kitchen and used the
noisy rainwater pump that stood by the sink.
I managed to get a couple of glasses of dirty
water. This made me feel a lot better, and the
noise of the pump did not bring a tentacle in
through the opening.

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On the thirteenth day I drank some

more water, and thought of impossible plans
of escape. Whenever I slept, I dreamed either
of the death of the curate or of wonderful
dinners.
Then, early on the fifteenth day, I
heard the sound of a dog outside. This
greatly surprised me. I went into the kitchen
and saw its head looking in through the hole.
I thought that if I could attract it in
quietly, I would be able, perhaps, to kill and
eat it. It would be a good idea to kill it anyway, in case its actions attracted the attention of the Martians.
I moved forwards, saying, 'Good dog!'
very softly, but it suddenly pulled his head
back and disappeared.
I listened. I heard the sound of some
birds but that was all.

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For a long time I lay close to the opening until, encouraged by the silence, I looked
out.
Except in the corner, where a number
of birds fought over some dead bodies, there
was not a living thing in the pit.
I stared around, hardly believing my
eyes. All the machinery had gone. Slowly I
made the opening larger and pushed myself
through it. I could see in every direction except behind me and there were no Martians
in sight.
I hesitated, then with a rush of desperate courage, and with my heart beating
violently, I climbed to the top of the pile of
earth in which I had been buried.
When I had last seen this part of
Sheen, it had been a street of comfortable
white and red houses. Now the neighbouring
ones had all been destroyed. Far away I saw

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a thin cat walking along a wall, but there was

no sign of people.
After my time in the darkness, the day
seemed very bright, the sky was shining blue.
A gentle wind moved the flowers. And oh!
the sweetness of the air.
For some time I stood there, not worrying about my safety. At that moment, I felt
the beginning of something that soon grew
quite clear in my mind, that worried me for
many days. I was not the master now, but an
animal among the animals, under the power
of the Martians. The rule of man had ended.
But as soon as this feeling came, it left
me, and my main problem became hunger. I
climbed a wall and fell into a neighbouring
garden. Here I found some young vegetables,
which I took. Then I started walking towards
the river. There were two ideas in my mind to get more food and to move, as quickly as
possible, away from the pit.

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When I reached the Thames, I drank

as much water as I could. I then walked up a
hill to Putney Common.
Here I moved through areas which
had been totally destroyed and others which
were totally undamaged; houses with their
curtains and their doors closed. I went into a
couple of the houses, looking for food, but all
of it had already been taken. I lay for the rest
of the day in a garden, too exhausted to go
on.
All this time I saw no human beings
and no signs of the Martians. I saw a couple
of hungry-looking dogs, but they hurried
away from me. I also saw some human
bones, with all the flesh eaten off. After sunset I struggled on along the road towards
Putney, and in a garden I found some potatoes, enough to stop my hunger. From there
I looked down on Putney and the river.

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The view of blackened trees and

empty ruined buildings made me very unhappy. And over all - silence. It filled me
with terror to think how quickly that great
change had come. Near the top of Putney
Hill I came across more human bones, eaten
clean and left lying around. The Martians, it
seemed, had killed and eaten everyone
around there, except for a few lucky ones like
myself. They were now looking for food
somewhere else. Perhaps even now they
were destroying Berlin or Paris, or maybe
they were moving north.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Man on Putney Hill

I spent that night in the pub that
stands on the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in
a made bed for the first time since I had run
away to Leatherhead. I broke into the house
- and afterwards found that the front door
was unlocked. I searched every room for
food until, when I was ready to give up, I
found some bread and two tins of fruit in one
of the bedrooms. The place had already been
searched and emptied. Later, in the bar, I
found some sandwiches that no one had noticed. I ate some of these and put the rest in
my pockets.

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I lit no lamps, afraid that a Martian

might come through that part of London
looking for food in the night. Before I went to
bed I was very restless and went from window to window, looking out for some sign of
them. I slept little. As I lay in bed, I found
myself thinking of the killing of the curate.
I had no regrets about this, but in the
stillness of the night, with a sense that God
was near, I thought again of every part of our
conversation from the time we had first met.
We had been unable to co-operate. If I had
known, I would have left him at Walton, but
I had not been able to see ahead. Nobody
saw me kill him, but I have described it here
and the reader can make a judgement.
The morning was bright and fine and
there were little golden clouds in the eastern
sky. In the road that runs from the top of
Putney Hill to Wimbledon many things had
been left behind by the crowds that ran

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towards London on the Sunday night after

the fighting began. There was a little twowheeled cart with a broken wheel. It had the
name of a shop written on it. There was a hat
lying in the mud, and a lot of broken glass
with blood on it.
I moved slowly because I was very
tired and my plans were uncertain. I had an
idea of going to Leatherhead, although I
knew there was little chance of finding my
wife there. Certainly, unless they had been
killed, she and my cousins would have run
away.
I came to the edge of Wimbledon
Common and stood there, under cover of
some trees and bushes. It stretched far and
wide and I hesitated on the edge of that large
open space. Soon I had an odd feeling of being watched and, turning suddenly, I saw
something hiding in some of the bushes. I
took a step towards it, and it rose up and

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became a man armed with a sword. I approached him slowly. He stood silently,
watching me but not moving.
As I came nearer, I saw that he was
dressed in clothes as dusty and dirty as my
own. His black hair fell over his eyes, and his
face was dark and dirty and thin, so at first I
did not recognize him.
'Stop!' he cried, when I was within ten
metres of him, and I stopped. 'Where have
you come from?' he said.
I thought, watching him.
'I have come from Sheen,' I said. 'I
was buried near the pit the Martians made
around their cylinder. I have escaped.'
'There is no food around here,' he
said. 'This is my country: all this hill down to
the river and up to the edge of the common.

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There is only food for one. Which way are

you going?'
'I don't know,' I said.
He looked at me uncertainly, then his
expression suddenly changed. He pointed at
me.
'It's you,' he said,'- the man from
Woking. And you weren't killed at
Weybridge?'
I recognized him at the same moment.
'You're the soldier who came into my
garden.'
'What luck!' he said. 'We are lucky
ones!'
He put out a hand and I took it.
'I hid,' he said. 'But they didn't kill
everyone. And after they went away, I went

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towards Walton across the fields. But - it's

only been sixteen days and your hair is grey.'
He looked over his shoulder suddenly. 'Only
a bird,' he said. 'This is a bit open. Let's crawl
under those bushes and talk.'
'Have you seen any Martians?' I
asked. 'Since I got out -'
'They've gone away across London,' he
said. 'I guess they've got a bigger camp there.
The night before last I saw some lights up in
the air. I believe they've built a flying-machine and are learning to fly'
I stopped, on hands and knees, because we had come to the bushes.
'Fly!'
'Yes,' he said, 'fly!'
I crawled into an open space in the
bushes and sat down.

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'If they manage to do that, we haven't

got a chance,' I said. 'They will simply go
round the world.'
'They will. But it will make things
easier around here. And besides ...' he looked
at me. 'Don't you believe that we're beaten? I
do.'
I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had
not thought of things this way, although it
was perfectly obvious. I had still held onto
some hope.
'It's finished,' he said. 'They've lost
one - just one. And they've taken over the
capital of the most powerful country in the
world. The death of that one at Weybridge
was an accident. And these are only the first
ones. They keep coming. These green stars I've seen none for five or six days, but I've no
doubt they're falling somewhere every night.
There's nothing we can do. We're beaten!'

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I did not answer. I sat staring in front

of me, trying without success to find a way of
arguing against him. Suddenly, I remembered the night I had watched through
the telescope.
'After the tenth shot they fired no
more - at least until the first cylinder came.'
'How do you know?' said the soldier. I
explained. 'Something wrong with the gun?'
he said. 'But even it there is, they'll get it
right again.'
We sat looking at each other.
'And what will they do with us?' I said.
'That's what I've been thinking.' he
said. 'It seems to me that at the moment they
catch us when they want food. But they won't
keep doing that. As soon as they've destroyed
all our guns and ships and railways, they'll
begin to catch us one by one, picking the best

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and keeping us in cages and things. They

haven't begun on us yet. Don't you see that?'
'Not begun!' I cried.
'Not begun. And instead of rushing
around blindly, we've got to change to suit
the new situation. That's how I see it.'
'But if that's true,' I said, 'what is there
to live for?'
'There won't be anything important
for a million years or more - no music, no art
and no nice little visits to restaurants. No entertainment. But men like me are going to go
on living - so human beings can continue.
And if I'm not mistaken, you'll show how
strong you are too. We aren't going to be
killed. And I don't intend to be caught,
either, and caged and fattened. Ugh!'
'You don't mean -'

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'I do. I'm going on. Under their feet.

I've thought about it. We've got to learn
while we've got a chance. And we've got to
live and stay independent while we learn.
That's what has to be done.'
I stared, surprised and greatly affected
by the man's courage.
'Good God!' I said. 'You are a brave
man.' And suddenly I held his hand. 'Go on,'
I said.
'Well, people who intend to escape
them must get ready. I'm getting ready. But
not all of us can live like animals, and that's
how we'll have to live. That's why I watched
you. I had my doubts. You're thinner. I didn't
know that it was you, you see. All these - the
sort of people that lived in these houses, all
those little office workers that used to live
down that way - they'd be no good. They
haven't any spirit in them - no proud dreams
and no great ideas. They just used to rush off

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to work - I've seen hundreds of them, with a

bit of breakfast in their hand, running to
catch their train, frightened they'd be sacked
if they didn't. Well, the Martians will be a
good thing for them. Nice big cages, fattening food, no worry. After a week or two running around the fields on empty stomachs
they'll come and be caught quite happily.' He
paused. 'The Martians will probably make
pets of some of them; train them to do tricks
- who knows? And some, maybe, they will
train to hunt us.'
'No,' I cried, 'that's impossible! No human being -'
'What's the good of going on with such
lies?' said the soldier. 'There are men who
would do it cheerfully. What nonsense to
pretend there aren't!'
And I realized that I agreed with him.

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I sat and thought about these things.

It was interesting that he, an ordinary soldier, seemed to have a much better understanding of the situation than I, a professional writer.
'What plans do you have?' I said.
He hesitated.
'Well, we have to invent a life where
people can live and have children, and be
safe enough to bring the children up. Yes wait a bit, and I'll make it clearer what I
think ought to be done. The ones the Martians capture will be like farm animals; in a
few years they'll be big, beautiful, stupid rubbish. But we who stay free risk turning
into wild animals.
'You see, I intend to live underground.
I've been thinking about the drains. Under
London there are hundreds of kilometres of
them. And we can dig passages between the

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drains and buildings. And then there are the

railways, where they go underground. You
begin to see? And we'll get some people together - strong, clean-minded men. We're
not going to accept any rubbish that comes
in. Weak ones go out again.'
'As you intended me to go?'
'Well - I discussed it, didn't I?
'We won't argue about that. Go on.'
'The people who stay will obey orders.
We want strong, good women too - mothers
and teachers. No lazy ones with rolling eyes.
We can't have any weak or silly ones. Life is
real again, and the useless and bad ones have
to die. They ought to die. They ought to be
willing to die. It would be wrong of them to
live and weaken the others.
'But it's no good just staying alive.
That's just living like rats. We have to save

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our knowledge, and add to it. That's why

men like you are needed. We must make
great safe places deep underground, and get
all the books we can; not novels and poetry,
but ideas, science books. We must go to the
British Museum and choose the best books
in it. Especially, we must keep our science learn more.'
The soldier paused and laid a brown
hand on my arm.
'In fact, it may not be so difficult to
learn how their fighting- machines work.
Think of four or five of them with men inside, firing Heat-Rays back at the Martians!'
For some time the imagination of the
soldier, and the confidence and courage he
showed, persuaded me completely. I believed
in his idea of the future and in the possibility
of his plans. We talked like this through the
early morning, and later came out of the
bushes. After checking the sky for Martians,

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we hurried quickly to the house on Putney

Hill where he had his hiding-place.
There I saw the work he had spent a
week on. It was a passage about ten metres
long, designed to reach the main drain on
Putney Hill. For the first time I began to
think that there was some distance between
his dreams and his powers, because I could
dig a hole like this in a day. But I believed in
him enough to work with him all that morning at his digging.
As we worked I thought about the job,
and soon some doubts began to come into
my mind. I thought about the distance to the
drain and the chances of missing it completely. I also felt that it would be easier to
get into the drain and dig back towards the
house. And just as I was beginning to face
these things, the soldier stopped digging and
looked at me.

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'We're working well,' he said. 'Let's

stop. I think it's time we looked around from
the top of the house.'
I wanted to continue, but a thought
came to me.
'Why were you walking around on the
common,' I asked, 'instead of being here?'
'Taking the air,' he said. 'It's safer by
night.'
'But the work?'
'Oh, one can't always work,' he said,
and in a flash I understood the man clearly.
We went together to the roof and
stood on a ladder, looking out of the roof
door. No Martians could be seen. We went
back down into the house. Neither of us
wanted to start digging again, and when he
suggested a meal I was quite happy to agree.

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Afterwards we drank wine and played

cards. He won most of the games, and when
we did not want to play any more I went
back up on the roof.
I stayed there for a long time, looking
north over the city. I began to feel that I had
failed my wife, and decided to leave this
dreamer of great things and to go on into
London. There, it seemed to me, I had the
best chance of learning what the Martians
and human beings were doing.for death

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dead London
After I had said goodbye to the soldier, I went down the hill, along the High
Street and across the bridge to Fulham.
There was black dust on the road after the
bridge, and it grew thicker in Fulham. The
streets were horribly quiet. I found some old
bread in a baker's shop there. After that, the
streets became clear of powder and I passed
some white houses which were on fire. The
noise of burning was actually better than
silence.
Beyond Fulham the streets were quiet
again. Here I found more black powder and
some dead bodies. I saw about ten along

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Fulham Road. They had been dead for many

days, so I hurried quickly past them. The
black powder covered them and softened
their shapes. One or two had been partly
eaten by dogs.
Where there was no black powder, it
was curiously like Sunday in the financial
area of London, with the closed shops, the
houses locked up and the curtains closed. In
some places thieves had been at work, but
usually only at the food and wine shops. A
jeweller's window had been broken open in
one place, but the thief had clearly been
chased away, because a number of gold
chains and a watch were lying on the pavement. I did not take the trouble to touch
them. Further down the road, a woman in
torn clothes was sitting on a doorstep. The
hand that hung over her knee was cut, and
blood had fallen onto her dirty brown dress.
A broken bottle of wine had formed a pool on

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the pavement. She seemed asleep, but she

was dead.
The silence grew greater. But it was
not the stillness of death - it was the stillness
of expectation. At any time the destruction
that had already happened to the northwestern borders of the city, that had destroyed Ealing, might strike among these
houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was
an empty city waiting for death...
In South Kensington the streets were
clear of dead people and of black powder,
and near there I first heard the howling. It
started very quietly. It was a sad movement
between two notes, 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,' continuing without stopping. When I passed
streets that ran to the north it grew louder,
and then houses and buildings seemed to cut
it off again. It came most loudly down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens.

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It seemed that all the empty houses

had found a voice for their fear and
loneliness.
'Ulla, ulla, ulla,' cried that inhuman
note - great waves of sound sweeping down
the broad, sunlit road, between the tall buildings on each side. I turned to the north, towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. The voice
grew stronger and stronger, although I could
see nothing above the roof-tops on the north
side of the park except some smoke to the
north-west.
'Ulla, ulla, ulla,' cried the voice, coming, it seemed to me, from the district
around Regent's Park. The howl affected my
mind, and my mood changed. I also found
that I was very tired, and hungry and thirsty
again.
It was already past midday. Why was I
walking alone in this city of the dead? I
thought of old friends that I had forgotten

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for years. I thought of the poisons in the

chemists' shops, the bottles in the wine
shops .. .
I came into Oxford Street by Marble
Arch, and here again were black powder and
several bodies. After a lot of trouble, I managed to break into a pub and find some food
and drink. I was tired after eating and went
into the room behind the bar and slept on a
black leather sofa that I found there.
I awoke to find that sad howling still
in my ears: 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,' It was
now getting dark, and after I had found some
bread and cheese in the bar I walked on
through the silent squares to Baker Street
and so came at last to Regents Park. And as I
came out of the top of Baker Street, I saw far
away over the trees, in the clearness of the
sunset, the top of the Martian fighting-machine from winch this howling came. I was
not frightened. I watched it for some time,

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but it did not move. It appeared to be standing and calling, for no reason that I could
discover.
I tried to work out a plan of action.
That non-stop sound of 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla'
confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to
be very afraid. Certainly I was more curious
to know the reason for this howling. I turned
and went into Park Road, intending to go
round the edge of the park, with houses
between us to keep me safe, and get a view of
this unmoving, howling Martian from the
direction of St John's Wood.
I came to a destroyed building-machine halfway to St John's Wood station. At
first I thought a house had fallen across the
road, but when I climbed up on the ruins I
saw, with a shock, this great machine lying,
with its tentacles bent and twisted, among
the ruins that it had made. The front part of
it was pushed in. It seemed that it had been

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driven blindly straight at the house, and had

been turned over when the house fell on it.
Wondering about all that I had seen, I
moved on towards Primrose Hill. Far away,
through a space in the trees, I saw a second
Martian fighting-machine, as unmoving as
the first, standing in the park near the Zoo.
Then the sound of 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla'
stopped. The silence came suddenly. And
now night, the mother of fear and mystery,
was coming.
London around me looked like a city
of ghosts. My imagination heard a thousand
noiseless enemies moving. Terror came to
me. In front of me the road became black
and I saw the twisted shape of a body lying
across the pavement. I could not go on. I
turned down St John's Wood Road and ran
away from this terrible stillness.
I hid from the night and the silence
until long after midnight, in a garden hut in

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Harrow Road. But before dawn my courage

returned, and while the stars were still in the
sky I turned again towards Regent's Park. I
lost my way among the streets, and soon saw
down a long road, in the half-light of the
early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill.
There, on the top, high against the early
morning stars, was a third Martian, standing
still like the others.
A mad idea came to me. I would die
and end it. And I would save myself even the
trouble of killing myself. I marched on
without fear towards this great machine, and
then, as I came nearer and the light grew, I
saw that a number of black birds were circling and gathering around the top of it. I
began to feel very happy and I started running along the road.
I got onto the grass before the sun
rose. Great piles of earth had formed around
a pit at the top of the hill - the final and

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largest one the Martians had made - and

from behind these piles thin smoke rose
against the sky. Against the sky-line an eager
dog ran and disappeared. The thought that
had flashed into my mind grew real, and believable. I felt no fear, only a wild, shaking
excitement, as I ran up the hill towards the
unmovmg Martian. Out of the top of it hung
long, brown pieces of flesh, which the birds
were tearing away.
In another moment I had climbed a
pile of earth and stood on its top, and the pit
was below me. It was a large space, with
enormous machines here and there within it,
great piles of material and strange buildings.
And all around it, some in their overturned
war-machines and some in building-machines, and ten of them lying in a row, were
the Martians - dead! They had been killed by
germs against which their systems could not
fight; killed, after all man's machines had

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failed, by the smallest things that God has

put on this Earth.
It had happened in this way, and I and
many others did not see that it would happen
because terror and disaster had blinded our
minds. These germs of disease have killed
people and animals since the beginning of
time, but over these many years we have developed the ability to fight against them. But
there are no germs on Mars, and as soon as
the Martians arrived, as soon as they drank
and fed, our tiny friends began to destroy
them. By paying with a million lives, human
beings have bought their right to live on
Earth. It is our home and would be ours even
if the Martians were ten times as strong as
they are.
I stood staring into the pit, and my
heart grew wonderfully happy as the rising
sun lit up the world around me. The pit was
still in darkness. Only the tops of the great

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engines, so unearthly in their shape, could be

seen in the morning light. I heard a large
number of dogs fighting over the bodies that
lay in the darkness at the bottom of the pit.
Across the pit, on its further edge, lay
the great flying-machine which they had
been testing in our heavier atmosphere when
disease and death stopped them. Death had
not come a day too soon. At the sound of
birds overhead I looked up at the enormous
fighting-machine that would never fight
again, at the pieces of red flesh that dropped
down onto the overturned seats on the top of
Primrose Hill.
I turned and looked down the slope of
the hill at those two other Martians that I
had seen the previous night. They were surrounded by birds now. One of them had died
as it had been crying to its friends. Perhaps it
was the last to die, and its voice had gone on
and on until its machinery stopped. They

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stood now, harmless tripods of shining metal, against the brightness of the rising sun.
All around the pit, and saved from
everlasting destruction, lay the great city.
And as I looked at it, and realized that the
shadows had been rolled back, and that
people might still live in its streets, and that
this dear city of mine might be once more
alive and powerful again, I felt such emotion
that I was very close to tears.
The trouble had ended. That same day
the healing would begin. People who were
still alive would start to return, and life
would come back to the empty streets. The
sound of tools would soon be heard in all the
burnt and broken houses. At the thought, I
lifted my hands towards the sky and began
thanking God. In a year, I thought, we would
rebuild all that had been destroyed.

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Then came the thought of myself, of

my wife, and the old life of hope and tender
helpfulness that had ended forever.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wreckage
And now comes the strangest thing in
my story. But perhaps it is not totally
strange. I remember, clearly and in great detail, all that I did that day until the time
when I stood crying on the top of Primrose
Hill. And then I forget.
I know nothing of the next three days.
I have learned since then that I was not the
first discoverer of the Martian defeat -several
wanderers like me had already known about
it on the previous night. One man - the first had even managed to send a telegram to Paris. From there the happy news had flashed
all over the world; a thousand cities, living in

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great fear, suddenly- turned on all their

lights.
They knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,
Manchester and Birmingham at the time
when I stood on the edge of the pit. Already
men, crying with joy, as I have heard, were
getting onto trains to go to London. Men on
bicycles rode through the countryside shouting the news to all.
And the food! Across the Channel,
across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic,
corn, bread and meat were coming to us. All
the ships in the world seemed to be coming
to London in those days. But I have no
memory of all of this. For three days I walked
aimlessly, a madman. Then I found myself in
a house of kind people, who had found me.
They have told me since that I was singing a
crazy song about 'The Last Man Left Alive!
The Last Man Left Alive!' Although they were
troubled with their own affairs, these people

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were very helpful to me. They gave me a

place to stay and protected me from myself.
Very gently, when my mind was working again, they told me all they knew about
what had happened in Leatherhead. Two
days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every person in it, by a Martian.
He had swept it all away for no reason at all,
it seemed.
I was a lonely man, and they were very
kind to me. I was a sad one too, and they
were patient with me. I stayed with them for
four days after my recovery. All that time I
felt a growing need to look again at whatever
remained of the little life that had seemed so
happy and bright in my past. My hosts tried
to change my mind but at last, promising
faithfully to return to them, I went out again
into the streets that had lately been so dark
and strange and empty.

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Already they were busy with returning

people; in places there were even shops
open. I remember how bright that day
seemed as I went sadly back to the little
house in Woking - how busy the streets were,
and how full of life. But then I noticed how ill
the people looked and how many of them
still wore old and dirty clothes. The churches
were giving out bread sent to us by the
French government, and tired-looking policemen stood at the corners of every street.
At the end of Waterloo Bridge I
bought a copy of the first newspaper to reappear. I learned nothing new except that
already in one week the examination of the
Martians' machines had produced amazing
results. Among other things, the newspaper
said that the 'Secret of Flying' had been discovered. I did not believe this at the time.
At Waterloo I found that free trains
were taking people to their homes. The first

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rush had already ended and there were few

people on the train. The city we went
through was dirty with the powder of the
Black Smoke, despite two days of thunderstorms and rain.
All down the line from there, the
country looked empty and unfamiliar.
Wimbledon particularly had suffered, and
beyond there I saw piles of earth around the
sixth cylinder. A number of people were
standing by it, and some soldiers were busy
in the middle. Over it was a British flag, flying cheerfully in the wind.
The line on the London side of Woking station was still being repaired, so I got
off the train at Byfleet and took the road to
Maybury, past the place where I had seen the
Martian fighting- machine in the thunderstorm. I was curious and I stopped to find
the twisted and broken dog-cart with the

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whitened bones of the horse. For a time I

stood and looked at the remains ...
Then I returned through the wood towards my home. A man standing at the open
door of a house greeted me by name as I
passed. I looked at my own house with a
quick flash of hope that died immediately.
The door had been broken, and it was opening slowly as I approached.
It blew shut again. The curtains of my
study blew out of the open window from
which I and the soldier had watched the
dawn. No one had closed it since then. I went
into the hall, and the house felt empty. The
stair carpet was discoloured where I had sat,
wet to the skin from the thunderstorm on
that first terrible night. Our muddy footsteps
still went up the stairs.
I followed them to my study and
found, lying on my writing- table, the page of
work I had left on the afternoon of the

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opening of the cylinder. For some time I

stood reading it. I remembered how I could
not concentrate that morning, hardly a
month before, and how I had stopped work
to get my newspaper from the newsboy. I remembered how I went to the garden gate as
he came past, and how I had listened to his
odd story of 'Men from Mars'.
I came down and went into the
dining-room. There were the remains of the
meat and the bread, now gone bad, where
the soldier and I had left them. My home was
a lonely place. I realized the stupidity of the
small hope I had held on to for so long. And
then a strange thing happened.
'The house is deserted,' said a voice.
'No one has been here for ten days. Don't
stay here and make yourself unhappy. No
one escaped except you.'
I was shocked. Had I spoken my
thought aloud? I turned, and the door to the

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garden was open behind me. I took a step towards it and stood looking out.
And there, amazed and afraid, as I too
stood amazed and afraid, were my cousin
and my wife - my wife white and tearless.
She gave a faint cry.
'I came here,' she said. 'I knew-knew -'
She put her hand to her throat and started to
fall. I stepped forwards and caught her in my
arms.
I can only regret now, as I finish my
story, how little I can help with the many
questions which are still unanswered. In one
area I shall certainly be criticized. I know
very little about medical matters, but it
seems to me most likely that the Martians
were killed by germs.
Certainly, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war, no
germs were found except ones that came

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from Earth. Besides this, we still know very

little about the Black Smoke, and the way
that the Heat-Ray worked remains a puzzle.
A question of more serious interest is
the possibility of another attack from the
Martians. I do not think that nearly enough
attention is being paid to this. Every time the
planet Mars comes near to us, I worry that
they might try again. We should be prepared.
It should be possible to find the position of
the gun from which the shots came, to watch
this part of the planet carefully and be ready.
In that case, the cylinder could be destroyed before it was cool enough for the Martians to come out, or they could be killed by
guns as soon as the door opened. It seems to
me that they have lost a great advantage in
the failure of their first surprise. Possibly
they also believe this.
One astronomer has given excellent
reasons for supposing that the Martians have

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actually landed on Venus. Seven months ago,

when these planets were close together,
faint, dark marks appeared on photographs
which suggested that a cylinder had been
fired from one to the other.
However, whether we expect another
attack or not, our views of the human future
must now be changed by these events. We
have learned that we cannot think of this
planet as a safe home for humans. We can
never know what unseen good or evil might
come to us suddenly out of space. Perhaps
this attack from Mars will be helpful to us in
the end. It has taken away our confidence in
the future, which was making us soft; it has
given great help to science, and it has made
us think of human beings as one family.
Perhaps, across the great distances of
space, the Martians have watched what
happened to the ones that landed on Earth
and learned their lesson - and have found a

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safer home on the planet Venus. Even if that

is true, for many years we will continue to
watch Mars carefully, and all falling stars will
make us afraid.
The war has broadened people's
minds enormously. Before it there was a general belief that there was no life in space
apart from on our tiny planet. If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to
think that this is impossible for us. So when
the slow cooling of the sun means that we
cannot continue to live on Earth, it may be
that life which began here can reach out and
continue there.
But that is a distant dream. We may,
on the other hand, still be destroyed by the
Martians. The future may belong to them
and not to us.
I must admit that the trouble and
danger of our time have left a continuing
sense of doubt and fear in my mind. I sit in

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my study writing by lamplight, and suddenly

I see the valley below on fire again, and feel
that the house around me is empty and
lonely. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and
vehicles pass me, a boy on a bicycle, children
going to school - and suddenly they become
strange and unreal, and I hurry on again
with the soldier through the hot, dangerous
silence. At night I see the black powder-darkening the silent streets, and the twisted bodies covered by it. They stand up in front of
me, torn and dog-bitten. They talk and grow
angry, paler, uglier, and I wake, cold and
shaking, in the darkness.
I go to London and see the busy
crowds in Fleet Street and the Strand, and it
comes to my mind that they are just the
ghosts of the past, walking the streets that I
have seen silent and empty, spirits in a dead
city. And it is strange, too, to stand on Primrose Hill, as I did only a day before writing
this last chapter. I saw the houses stretching

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away and disappearing into the smoke and

mist, people walking up and down between
the flower-beds, and the sightseers around
the Martian machine that still stands there. I
heard the noise of playing children and remembered the deep silence of the dawn of
that last great day...
And it is strangest of all to hold my
wife's hand again, and to think that I have
thought of her, and that she has thought of
me, among the dead.
- THE END Hope you are enjoy the reading!
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