Chapter Chapter 18 · UNDER FOOT.

. UNDER FOOT.

In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to

tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two

chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at

Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will

resume. We stopped 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 do nothing but wait in aching

inactivity during those two weary days.

My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at

Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man. I

paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off

from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin I

knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of man

to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now was

not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe

that the Martians were moving Londonward and away from her. Such vague

anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew very weary and

irritable with the curate’s perpetual ejaculations; I tired of the

sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual remonstrance I

kept away from him, staying in a room—evidently a children’s

schoolroom—containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When he followed me

thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house and, in order to

be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.

We were hopelessly hemmed in by the Black Smoke all that day and the

morning of the next. There were signs of people in the next house on

Sunday evening—a face at a window and moving lights, and later the

slamming of a door. But I do not know who these people were, nor what

became of them. We saw nothing of them next day. The Black Smoke

drifted slowly riverward all through Monday morning, creeping nearer

and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway outside the house

that hid us.

A Martian came across the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a

jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashed all the

windows it touched, and scalded the curate’s hand as he fled out of the

front room. When at last we crept across the sodden rooms and looked

out again, the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had

passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were astonished to see an

unaccountable redness mingling with the black of the scorched meadows.

For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, save

that we were relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But later I

perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, that now we might get away.

So soon as I realised that the way of escape was open, my dream of

action returned. But the curate was lethargic, unreasonable.

“We are safe here,” he repeated; “safe here.”

I resolved to leave him—would that I had! Wiser now for the

artilleryman’s teaching, I sought out food and drink. I had found oil

and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I

found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear to him that I meant to

go alone—had reconciled myself to going alone—he suddenly roused

himself to come. And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we

started about five o’clock, as I should judge, along the blackened road

to Sunbury.

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in

contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and

luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery

powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.

We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of strange

and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved

to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. We

went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro under the

chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards

Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first people we

saw.

Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still

afire. Twickenham was uninjured by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, and

there were more people about here, though none could give us news. For

the most part they were like ourselves, taking advantage of a lull to

shift their quarters. I have an impression that many of the houses here

were still occupied by scared inhabitants, too frightened even for

flight. Here too the evidence of a hasty rout was abundant along the

road. I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap, pounded

into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts. We crossed Richmond

Bridge about half past eight. We hurried across the exposed bridge, of

course, but I noticed floating down the stream a number of red masses,

some many feet across. I did not know what these were—there was no time

for scrutiny—and I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they

deserved. Here again on the Surrey side were black dust that had once

been smoke, and dead bodies—a heap near the approach to the station;

but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we were some way towards

Barnes.

We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a

side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the

hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of Richmond

there was no trace of the Black Smoke.

Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running,

and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over

the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at our

danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have

perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned

aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping

silently, and refusing to stir again.

But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in

the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a shrubbery, and

along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so

emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the shed, but

he came hurrying after me.

That second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did. For it was

manifest the Martians were about us. No sooner had the curate overtaken

me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen before or

another, far away across the meadows in the direction of Kew Lodge.

Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the

green-grey of the field, and in a moment it was evident this Martian

pursued them. In three strides he was among them, and they ran

radiating from his feet in all directions. He used no Heat-Ray to

destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed them

into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a

workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder.

It was the first time I realised that the Martians might have any other

purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We stood for a moment

petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled

garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and lay there,

scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were out.

I suppose it was nearly eleven o’clock before we gathered courage to

start again, no longer venturing into the road, but sneaking along

hedgerows and through plantations, and watching keenly through the

darkness, he on the right and I on the left, for the Martians, who

seemed to be all about us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched

and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, and a number of scattered

dead bodies of men, burned horribly about the heads and trunks but with

their legs and boots mostly intact; and of dead horses, fifty feet,

perhaps, behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed gun carriages.

Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the place was silent and

deserted. Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too dark

for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my companion

suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one

of the houses.

The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the window,

was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable left in

the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water to drink;

and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our next

house-breaking.

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here

there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the pantry of

this domicile we found a store of food—two loaves of bread in a pan, an

uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so

precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to subsist upon

this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf,

and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces. This

pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was firewood;

there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of

burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits.

We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark—for we dared not strike a

light—and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle. The

curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly enough, for

pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when

the thing happened that was to imprison us.

“It can’t be midnight yet,” I said, and then came a blinding glare of

vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly

visible in green and black, and vanished again. And then followed such

a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the

heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash

of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the

plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of

fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor

against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible for a long time,

the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness again, and

he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from a cut

forehead, was dabbing water over me.

For some time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things came

to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.

“Are you better?” asked the curate in a whisper.

At last I answered him. I sat up.

“Don’t move,” he said. “The floor is covered with smashed crockery from

the dresser. You can’t possibly move without making a noise, and I

fancy _they_ are outside.”

We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other

breathing. Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near us,

some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.

Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.

“That!” said the curate, when presently it happened again.

“Yes,” I said. “But what is it?”

“A Martian!” said the curate.

I listened again.

“It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a time I was inclined

to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the

house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton

Church.

Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or

four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light

filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through

a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the

wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the

first time.

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed

over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet.

Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the

window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered

with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was

broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the

greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this

ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with

a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating

blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering

from the walls above the kitchen range.

As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body

of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing

cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible

out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery.

Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.

“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars, has

struck this house and buried us under the ruins!”

For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:

“God have mercy upon us!”

I heard him presently whimpering to himself.

Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my part

scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of

the kitchen door. I could just see the curate’s face, a dim, oval

shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic

hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet

interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for

the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if

anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured

thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the

vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. Once the

light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely

dark. For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and shivering,

until our tired attention failed. . . .

At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe

we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening.

My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action. I

told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the

pantry. He made me no answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint

noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me.