Chapter Chapter 24 · THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.

. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.

I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill,

sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to

Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into

that house—afterwards I found the front door was on the latch—nor how I

ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of despair, in

what seemed to me to be a servant’s bedroom, I found a rat-gnawed crust

and two tins of pineapple. The place had been already searched and

emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches

that had been overlooked. The latter I could not eat, they were too

rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger, but filled my

pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating that

part of London for food in the night. Before I went to bed I had an

interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to window, peering

out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I lay in bed I

found myself thinking consecutively—a thing I do not remember to have

done since my last argument with the curate. During all the intervening

time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague

emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night my

brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the food I had eaten, grew clear

again, and I thought.

Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of the

curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of my

wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; I

saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but

quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself then as I see myself

now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a

sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no

condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. In the

silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of God that

sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood my trial,

my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I retraced every step

of our conversation from the moment when I had found him crouching

beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to the fire and smoke

that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We had been incapable of

co-operation—grim chance had taken no heed of that. Had I foreseen, I

should have left him at Halliford. But I did not foresee; and crime is

to foresee and do. And I set this down as I have set all this story

down, as it was. There were no witnesses—all these things I might have

concealed. But I set it down, and the reader must form his judgment as

he will.

And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate

body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. For

the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so,

unhappily, I could for the latter. And suddenly that night became

terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I

found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and

painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from

Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers,

had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I

prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the

darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn

had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat

leaving its hiding place—a creature scarcely larger, an inferior

animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be

hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely,

if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity—pity for

those witless souls that suffer our dominion.

The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, and

was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs from the

top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the

panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night

after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed

with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed

wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into

the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot of

blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. My movements

were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of going to

Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of

finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly,

my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to me I might

find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled. I knew I wanted

to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men, but

I had no clear idea how the finding might be done. I was also sharply

aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner I went, under cover

of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of Wimbledon Common,

stretching wide and far.

That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there

was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge

of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I

came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the

trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout

resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling

of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes.

I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, and it rose up and

became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached him slowly. He stood

silent and motionless, regarding me.

As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and

filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged

through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches

mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His

black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and

sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut

across the lower part of his face.

“Stop!” he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I stopped.

His voice was hoarse. “Where do you come from?” he said.

I thought, surveying him.

“I come from Mortlake,” I said. “I was buried near the pit the Martians

made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped.”

“There is no food about here,” he said. “This is my country. All this

hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge of the

common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?”

I answered slowly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have been buried in the ruins of a house

thirteen or fourteen days. I don’t know what has happened.”

He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed

expression.

“I’ve no wish to stop about here,” said I. “I think I shall go to

Leatherhead, for my wife was there.”

He shot out a pointing finger.

“It is you,” said he; “the man from Woking. And you weren’t killed at

Weybridge?”

I recognised him at the same moment.

“You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.”

“Good luck!” he said. “We are lucky ones! Fancy _you_!” He put out a

hand, and I took it. “I crawled up a drain,” he said. “But they didn’t

kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards Walton across

the fields. But—— It’s not sixteen days altogether—and your hair is

grey.” He looked over his shoulder suddenly. “Only a rook,” he said.

“One gets to know that birds have shadows these days. This is a bit

open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk.”

“Have you seen any Martians?” I said. “Since I crawled out——”

“They’ve gone away across London,” he said. “I guess they’ve got a

bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky

is alive with their lights. It’s like a great city, and in the glare

you can just see them moving. By daylight you can’t. But nearer—I

haven’t seen them—” (he counted on his fingers) “five days. Then I saw

a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the night

before last”—he stopped and spoke impressively—“it was just a matter of

lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe they’ve built a

flying-machine, and are learning to fly.”

I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.

“Fly!”

“Yes,” he said, “fly.”

I went on into a little bower, and sat down.

“It is all over with humanity,” I said. “If they can do that they will

simply go round the world.”

He nodded.

“They will. But—— It will relieve things over here a bit. And

besides——” He looked at me. “Aren’t you satisfied it _is_ up with

humanity? I am. We’re down; we’re beat.”

I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact—a fact

perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a vague hope;

rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated his words,

“We’re beat.” They carried absolute conviction.

“It’s all over,” he said. “They’ve lost _one_—just _one_. And they’ve

made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world.

They’ve walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an

accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These green

stars—I’ve seen none these five or six days, but I’ve no doubt they’re

falling somewhere every night. Nothing’s to be done. We’re under! We’re

beat!”

I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise

some countervailing thought.

“This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any

more than there’s war between man and ants.”

Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.

“After the tenth shot they fired no more—at least, until the first

cylinder came.”

“How do you know?” said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought.

“Something wrong with the gun,” he said. “But what if there is? They’ll

get it right again. And even if there’s a delay, how can it alter the

end? It’s just men and ants. There’s the ants builds their cities, live

their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want them out of the

way, and then they go out of the way. That’s what we are now—just ants.

Only——”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re eatable ants.”

We sat looking at each other.

“And what will they do with us?” I said.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said; “that’s what I’ve been

thinking. After Weybridge I went south—thinking. I saw what was up.

Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves.

But I’m not so fond of squealing. I’ve been in sight of death once or

twice; I’m not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst,

death—it’s just death. And it’s the man that keeps on thinking comes

through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I, ‘Food won’t last

this way,’ and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like a

sparrow goes for man. All round”—he waved a hand to the

horizon—“they’re starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other. .

. .”

He saw my face, and halted awkwardly.

“No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France,” he said. He

seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on:

“There’s food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines, spirits,

mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was

telling you what I was thinking. ‘Here’s intelligent things,’ I said,

‘and it seems they want us for food. First, they’ll smash us up—ships,

machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All that will

go. If we were the size of ants we might pull through. But we’re not.

It’s all too bulky to stop. That’s the first certainty.’ Eh?”

I assented.

“It is; I’ve thought it out. Very well, then—next; at present we’re

caught as we’re wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles to get a

crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, picking

houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they won’t keep on

doing that. So soon as they’ve settled all our guns and ships, and

smashed our railways, and done all the things they are doing over

there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the best and

storing us in cages and things. That’s what they will start doing in a

bit. Lord! They haven’t begun on us yet. Don’t you see that?”

“Not begun!” I exclaimed.

“Not begun. All that’s happened so far is through our not having the

sense to keep quiet—worrying them with guns and such foolery. And

losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn’t any

more safety than where we were. They don’t want to bother us yet.

They’re making their things—making all the things they couldn’t bring

with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very

likely that’s why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of

hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing about blind, on

the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, we’ve

got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs. That’s

how I figure it out. It isn’t quite according to what a man wants for

his species, but it’s about what the facts point to. And that’s the

principle I acted upon. Cities, nations, civilisation, progress—it’s

all over. That game’s up. We’re beat.”

“But if that is so, what is there to live for?”

The artilleryman looked at me for a moment.

“There won’t be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so;

there won’t be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds at

restaurants. If it’s amusement you’re after, I reckon the game is up.

If you’ve got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas with

a knife or dropping aitches, you’d better chuck ’em away. They ain’t no

further use.”

“You mean——”

“I mean that men like me are going on living—for the sake of the breed.

I tell you, I’m grim set on living. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ll

show what insides _you’ve_ got, too, before long. We aren’t going to be

exterminated. And I don’t mean to be caught either, and tamed and

fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those brown

creepers!”

“You don’t mean to say——”

“I do. I’m going on, under their feet. I’ve got it planned; I’ve

thought it out. We men are beat. We don’t know enough. We’ve got to

learn before we’ve got a chance. And we’ve got to live and keep

independent while we learn. See! That’s what has to be done.”

I stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man’s resolution.

“Great God!” cried I. “But you are a man indeed!” And suddenly I

gripped his hand.

“Eh!” he said, with his eyes shining. “I’ve thought it out, eh?”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I’m

getting ready. Mind you, it isn’t all of us that are made for wild

beasts; and that’s what it’s got to be. That’s why I watched you. I had

my doubts. You’re slender. I didn’t know that it was you, you see, or

just how you’d been buried. All these—the sort of people that lived in

these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down

_that_ way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud

dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord!

What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to

work—I’ve seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild

and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d

get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to

take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t

be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the

back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because

they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make

for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.

Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on

Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well,

the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages,

fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing

about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be

caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder what

people did before there were Martians to take care of them. And the bar

loafers, and mashers, and singers—I can imagine them. I can imagine

them,” he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. “There’ll be any

amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There’s hundreds of

things I saw with my eyes that I’ve only begun to see clearly these

last few days. There’s lots will take things as they are—fat and

stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it’s all

wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things

are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the

weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always

make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and

submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you’ve seen

the same thing. It’s energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside

out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And those

of a less simple sort will work in a bit of—what is it?—eroticism.”

He paused.

“Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them

to do tricks—who knows?—get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up

and had to be killed. 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 artilleryman.

“There’s men who’d do it cheerful. What nonsense to pretend there

isn’t!”

And I succumbed to his conviction.

“If they come after me,” he said; “Lord, if they come after me!” and

subsided into a grim meditation.

I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against

this man’s reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one would have

questioned my intellectual superiority to his—I, a professed and

recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier;

and yet he had already formulated a situation that I had scarcely

realised.

“What are you doing?” I said presently. “What plans have you made?”

He hesitated.

“Well, it’s like this,” he said. “What have we to do? We have to invent

a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure

to bring the children up. Yes—wait a bit, and I’ll make it clearer what

I think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts;

in a few generations they’ll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded,

stupid—rubbish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go

savage—degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, how I

mean to live is underground. I’ve been thinking about the drains. Of

course those who don’t know drains think horrible things; but under

this London are miles and miles—hundreds of miles—and a few days rain

and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are

big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then there’s cellars, vaults,

stores, from which bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the

railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin to see? And we form a

band—able-bodied, clean-minded men. We’re not going to pick up any

rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again.”

“As you meant me to go?”

“Well—I parleyed, didn’t I?”

“We won’t quarrel about that. Go on.”

“Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want

also—mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies—no blasted rolling

eyes. We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the

useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die.

They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all,

to live and taint the race. And they can’t be happy. Moreover, dying’s

none so dreadful; it’s the funking makes it bad. And in all those

places we shall gather. Our district will be London. And we may even be

able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the Martians keep

away. Play cricket, perhaps. That’s how we shall save the race. Eh?

It’s a possible thing? But saving the race is nothing in itself. As I

say, that’s only being rats. It’s saving our knowledge and adding to it

is the thing. There men like you come in. There’s books, there’s

models. We must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books

we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science books. That’s

where men like you come in. We must go to the British Museum and pick

all those books through. Especially we must keep up our science—learn

more. We must watch these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When

it’s all working, perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great

thing is, we must leave the Martians alone. We mustn’t even steal. If

we get in their way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm.

Yes, I know. But they’re intelligent things, and they won’t hunt us

down if they have all they want, and think we’re just harmless vermin.”

The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.

“After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before—Just

imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly starting

off—Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in ’em. Not a Martian

in ’em, but men—men who have learned the way how. It may be in my time,

even—those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its

Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What would it

matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a

bust like that? I reckon the Martians’ll open their beautiful eyes!

Can’t you see them, man? Can’t you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing

and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something

out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they

are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has

come back to his own.”

For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the tone of

assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. I

believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in

the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks

me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily

with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully

in the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. We talked in

this manner through the early morning time, and later crept out of the

bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately

to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal

cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week

upon—it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to

reach to the main drain on Putney Hill—I had my first inkling of the

gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in

a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that

morning until past midday at his digging. We had a garden barrow and

shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed

ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring

pantry. I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the

world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in

my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I

worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a

purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the

distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we

had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should

dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at

once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to

me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a

needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these

things, the artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.

“We’re working well,” he said. He put down his spade. “Let us knock off

a bit,” he said. “I think it’s time we reconnoitred from the roof of

the house.”

I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade;

and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so did he

at once.

“Why were you walking about the common,” I said, “instead of being

here?”

“Taking the air,” he said. “I was coming back. It’s safer by night.”

“But the work?”

“Oh, one can’t always work,” he said, and in a flash I saw the man

plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. “We ought to reconnoitre now,”

he said, “because if any come near they may hear the spades and drop

upon us unawares.”

I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof and

stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were to be

seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under shelter

of the parapet.

From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney, but

we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the low

parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the trees

about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and

set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was strange how

entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water for their

propagation. About us neither had gained a footing; laburnums, pink

mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of laurels and

hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond Kensington

dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the northward

hills.

The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still

remained in London.

“One night last week,” he said, “some fools got the electric light in

order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze, crowded

with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting

till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came they became

aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham and looking

down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must have

given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road towards them,

and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened to run away.”

Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose

plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently of the

possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than half

believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand

something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing

nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that

he personally was to capture and fight the great machine.

After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed disposed

to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was nothing loath.

He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went away

and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit these, and his optimism

glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming as a great occasion.

“There’s some champagne in the cellar,” he said.

“We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,” said I.

“No,” said he; “I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We’ve a heavy

enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength while we

may. Look at these blistered hands!”

And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards

after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing London

between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we played

for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober

reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable, I found the

card game and several others we played extremely interesting.

Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of

extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before

us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the

chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the “joker” with vivid

delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough

chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a

lamp.

After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the artilleryman

finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. He was no longer

the energetic regenerator of his species I had encountered in the

morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more

thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with my health, proposed in

a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. I took a

cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken

that blazed so greenly along the Highgate hills.

At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The

northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington

glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed up

and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was black.

Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple

fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a space I could

not understand it, and then I knew that it must be the red weed from

which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that realisation my

dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of things, awoke

again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear, glowing high in the

west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of Hampstead

and Highgate.

I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque

changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight

prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of

feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful

symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a

traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I

resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to

his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it seemed to

me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my

fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the roof when the late moon

rose.