บทที่ บทที่ 5 · THE HEAT-RAY.

. THE HEAT-RAY.

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder

in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of

fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in the

heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground of

fear and curiosity.

I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate

longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,

seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand-heaps

that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black

whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was

immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by

joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling

motion. What could be going on there?

Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups—one a little

crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the direction of

Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict. There were few near

me. One man I approached—he was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine,

though I did not know his name—and accosted. But it was scarcely a time

for articulate conversation.

“What ugly _brutes_!” he said. “Good God! What ugly brutes!” He

repeated this over and over again.

“Did you see a man in the pit?” I said; but he made no answer to that.

We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side, deriving,

I fancy, a certain comfort in one another’s company. Then I shifted my

position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a yard or more

of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was walking towards

Woking.

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The

crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I heard

now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards Chobham

dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.

It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I

suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore confidence.

At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the

sand-pits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the

stillness of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken. Vertical

black figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch, and

advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular

crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns. I,

too, on my side began to move towards the pit.

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand-pits,

and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a lad

trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards of

the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little

black knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since

the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,

intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by

approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left.

It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards I

learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this

attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance dragged

inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost complete

circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at

discreet distances.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous

greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which drove

up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so

bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown

common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken

abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after their

dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became audible.

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at

its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical

black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their

faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then

slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning

noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a

beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to

another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some

invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was

as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and

falling, and their supporters turning to run.

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from

man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it was

something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of

light, and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft

of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry

furze bush became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away

towards Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden

buildings suddenly set alight.

It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this

invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming towards me

by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied

to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand-pits and the sudden

squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as if an

invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather

between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the

sand-pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a

crash far away to the left where the road from Woking station opens out

on the common. Forth-with the hissing and humming ceased, and the

black, dome-like object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood motionless,

dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that death swept

through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in my surprise.

But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me suddenly dark

and unfamiliar.

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where

its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the early

night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the stars were

mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost

greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came

out sharp and black against the western afterglow. The Martians and

their appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast

upon which their restless mirror wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated

trees here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses towards

Woking station were sending up spires of flame into the stillness of

the evening air.

Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The

little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out

of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, had

scarcely been broken.

It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless, unprotected,

and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without,

came—fear.

With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the heather.

The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of

the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an

extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently

as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back.

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played

with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this

mysterious death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap after me

from the pit about the cylinder, and strike me down.