The War of the Worlds | Page 6

this in
the papers except a little note in the DAILY TELEGRAPH, and the world went in
ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not
have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at
Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings
invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.
In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black
and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the
corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof--an
oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but
audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round
planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still,
faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But
so little it was, so silvery warm--a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really
this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in
view.

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede,
but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more
than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in
which the dust of the material universe swims.
Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars
infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You
know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far
profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and
steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so
many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to
bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I
watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.
That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A
reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer
struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and
I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness,
to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas
that came out towards us.
That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a
second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the
table there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes.
I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I
had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave
it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness
were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.
He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the
vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites
might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was
in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken
the same direction in the two adjacent planets.
"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one," he said.
Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and
again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after
the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing
caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a
powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the
clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.
Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared
here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic