บทที่ บทที่ 4 · THE CYLINDER OPENS.

. THE CYLINDER OPENS.

When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups

were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons were

returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black

against the lemon yellow of the sky—a couple of hundred people,

perhaps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle appeared

to be going on about the pit. Strange imaginings passed through my

mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent’s voice:

“Keep back! Keep back!”

A boy came running towards me.

“It’s a-movin’,” he said to me as he passed; “a-screwin’ and a-screwin’

out. I don’t like it. I’m a-goin’ ’ome, I am.”

I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three

hundred people elbowing and jostling one another, the one or two ladies

there being by no means the least active.

“He’s fallen in the pit!” cried some one.

“Keep back!” said several.

The crowd swayed a little, and I elbowed my way through. Every one

seemed greatly excited. I heard a peculiar humming sound from the pit.

“I say!” said Ogilvy; “help keep these idiots back. We don’t know

what’s in the confounded thing, you know!”

I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking I believe he was,

standing on the cylinder and trying to scramble out of the hole again.

The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two

feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I

narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and

as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder

fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into

the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a

moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in

my eyes.

I think everyone expected to see a man emerge—possibly something a

little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I

did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the

shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two

luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey

snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the

writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me—and then another.

A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman

behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still,

from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my

way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to

horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate

exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I

saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself

alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off,

Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable

terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising

slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught

the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass

that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one

might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim

of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature

heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped

the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the

strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its

pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin

beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth,

the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs

in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of

movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above

all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes—were at once

vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something

fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of

the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter,

this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the

cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great

mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith

another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the

aperture.

I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps

a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for I could

not avert my face from these things.

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped,

panting, and waited further developments. The common round the

sand-pits was dotted with people, standing like myself in a

half-fascinated terror, staring at these creatures, or rather at the

heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with

a renewed horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on

the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in,

but showing as a little black object against the hot western sun. Now

he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back until

only his head was visible. Suddenly he vanished, and I could have

fancied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a momentary impulse to go

back and help him that my fears overruled.

Everything was then quite invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the

heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming

along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the

sight—a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more

standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind

gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short,

excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. The

barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the

burning sky, and in the sand-pits was a row of deserted vehicles with

their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground.