บทที่ บทที่ 8 · FRIDAY NIGHT.

. FRIDAY NIGHT.

The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and

wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of

the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of

the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. If

on Friday night you had taken a pair of compasses and drawn a circle

with a radius of five miles round the Woking sand-pits, I doubt if you

would have had one human being outside it, unless it were some relation

of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or London people lying dead

on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the

new-comers. Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and

talked about it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the

sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.

In London that night poor Henderson’s telegram describing the gradual

unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening

paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no

reply—the man was killed—decided not to print a special edition.

Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were

inert. I have already described the behaviour of the men and women to

whom I spoke. All over the district people were dining and supping;

working men were gardening after the labours of the day, children were

being put to bed, young people were wandering through the lanes

love-making, students sat over their books.

Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant

topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an

eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a

shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily

routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done

for countless years—as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. Even

at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was the case.

In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going

on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and

waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. A boy

from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was selling papers with

the afternoon’s news. The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle

of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of “Men

from Mars!” Excited men came into the station about nine o’clock with

incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might

have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside

the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark

dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of

smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious

than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the

common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen

villas burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the

houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there

kept awake till dawn.

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the

crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or two

adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and

crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now and

again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship’s searchlight swept the

common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that big

area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay

about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise of

hammering from the pit was heard by many people.

So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre,

sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart,

was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it

was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few

dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there.

Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of

excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept

as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it

had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently

clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to

develop.

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless,

indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and

ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit

sky.

About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and deployed

along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a second company

marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the common.

Several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common

earlier in the day, and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing.

The colonel of the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy

questioning the crowd at midnight. The military authorities were

certainly alive to the seriousness of the business. About eleven, the

next morning’s papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars, two

Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started

from Aldershot.

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking,

saw a star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest. It

had a greenish colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer

lightning. This was the second cylinder.