War of the Worlds

a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of
biscuits.

We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike
a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle.
The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly
enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength
by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us.

"It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding glare
of vivid green light.  Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly
visible in green and black, and vanished again.  And then followed such
a concussion as I have never heard before or since.  So close on the
heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash
of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the
plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of
fragments upon our heads.  I was knocked headlong across the floor
against the oven handle and stunned.  I was insensible for a long
time, the curate told me, and when I came to we were in darkness
again, and he, with a face wet, as I found afterwards, with blood from
a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me.

For some time I could not recollect what had happened.  Then things
came to me slowly.  A bruise on my temple asserted itself.

"Are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper.

At last I answered him.  I sat up.

"Don't move," he said.  "The floor is covered with smashed crockery
from the dresser.  You can't possibly move without making a noise, and
I fancy _they_ are outside."

We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other
breathing.  Everything seemed deadly still, but once something near
us, some plaster or broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound.
Outside and very near was an intermittent, metallic rattle.

"That!" said the curate, when presently it happened again.

"Yes," I said.  "But what is it?"

"A Martian!" said the curate.

I listened again.

"It was not like the Heat-Ray," I said, and for a time I was
inclined to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled
against the house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of
Shepperton Church.

Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or
four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved.  And then the light
filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through
a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in
the wall behind us.  The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for
the first time.

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which
flowed over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our
feet.  Outside, the soil was banked high against the house.  At the
top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe.  The floor
was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the
house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was
evident the greater part of the house had collapsed.  Contrasting
vividly with this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion,
pale green, and with a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the
wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured
supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range.

As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the
body of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still
glowing cylinder.  At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as
possible out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the
scullery.

Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.

"The fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars, has
struck this house and buried us under the ruins!"

For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:

"God have mercy upon us!"

I heard him presently whimpering to himself.

Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my
part scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint
light of the kitchen door.  I could just see the curate's face, a dim,
oval shape, and his collar and cuffs.  Outside there began a metallic
hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet
interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine.  These noises, for
the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if
anything to increase in number as time wore on.  Presently a measured
thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the
vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued.  Once the
light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely
dark.  For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and
shivering, until our tired attention failed. . . .