War of the Worlds

would be the same.  His own body would be a cope of lead to him.  That,
indeed, was the general opinion.  Both _The Times_ and the _Daily
Telegraph_, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both
overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.

The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen
or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars.
The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians
indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their
bodies.  And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that
such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able
to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.

But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my
reasoning was dead against the chances of the invaders.  With wine and
food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring
my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.

"They have done a foolish thing," said I, fingering my wineglass.
"They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror.
Perhaps they expected to find no living things--certainly no
intelligent living things."

"A shell in the pit" said I, "if the worst comes to the worst will
kill them all."

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my
perceptive powers in a state of erethism.  I remember that dinner
table with extraordinary vividness even now.  My dear wife's sweet
anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white
cloth with its silver and glass table furniture--for in those days
even philosophical writers had many little luxuries--the crimson-purple
wine in my glass, are photographically distinct.  At the end of
it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's
rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in
his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless
sailors in want of animal food.  "We will peck them to death tomorrow,
my dear."

I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to
eat for very many strange and terrible days.



CHAPTER EIGHT

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