The War of the Worlds | Page 7

periodical PUNCH, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all

unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a
pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by
day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that
swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I
remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the
illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times scarcely realise the
abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was much
occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the
probable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed.
One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went
for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her,
and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many
telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists
from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the
upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the
distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into
melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and
yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and
tranquil.

CHAPTER TWO
THE FALLING STAR
Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing

over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have
seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish
streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on
meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred
miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.
I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows
face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the
night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from
outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up
as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I
myself heard nothing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must
have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended.
No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.
But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was
persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw,
and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not
far from the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile,
and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath,
forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a
thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.
The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir
tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of
a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured
incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at
the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are rounded more or less
completely. It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his
near approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of
its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.
He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself, staring at
its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and colour, and dimly
perceiving even then some evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was
wonderfully still, and the sun, just clearing