Book 1 · Chapter 9

Saturday is stuck in my memory as a seriously tense day. It was also a total drag, super hot and sticky, and I heard the weather was changing fast. I didn’t sleep much, but my wife did, and I woke up early.

I headed out to my garden before breakfast and just stood there, listening, but all I heard near the common was a lark singing. The milkman showed up like always. I heard his cart rattling and went around to the side gate to get the latest news.

He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by soldiers, and they were expecting guns. Then - a familiar, comforting sound - I heard a train heading towards Woking. "They aren’t supposed to be killed," said the milkman, "if it can be avoided."

I saw my neighbor gardening, chatted with him for a bit, and then strolled in for breakfast. It was a pretty normal morning. My neighbor thought the troops would be able to capture or destroy the Martians during the day. "It’s a shame they’re so hard to approach," he said.

"It would be interesting to know how they live on another planet; we might learn a thing or two. He came up to the fence and offered me a handful of strawberries, because he’s generous with his garden. At the same time, he told me about the pine woods around the Byfleet Golf Links burning.

"They say," he said, "that another of those things fell there - number two. But one’s enough, right? This whole mess is going to cost the insurance companies a ton of money before everything’s settled. He laughed, like everything was just fine.

The woods, he said, were still burning, and he pointed out a haze of smoke. "They’ll be hot underfoot for days, because of the thick layer of pine needles and grass," he said, then got serious about "poor Ogilvy. After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common.

Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers - sappers, I think, guys in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots that came up to their calves.

They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing guard there. I talked with these soldiers for a while ; I told them about seeing the Martians the night before.

None of them had seen the Martians, and they barely had any idea what they were like, so they peppered me with questions. They said they didn’t know who had authorized the troop movements; their guess was that there was some kind of disagreement at the Horse Guards.

The average sapper is way more educated than the typical soldier, and they discussed the tricky situation of a possible fight with some intelligence. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they started arguing among themselves. "Crawl up under cover and rush ’em, I say," said one.

"Get outta here!" said another. "What’s cover gonna do against this heat? Sticks’ll cook ya! What we gotta do is get as close as the ground’ll let us, and then dig a trench. "Forget your trenches! You always want trenches; you should’a been born a rabbit, Snippy."

"Ain’t they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly - a little, thoughtful, dark man, smoking a pipe. I repeated my description. "Octopuses," said he, "that’s what I calls ’em. Talk about fishers of men - fighters of fish it is this time!"

"It ain’t no big deal killing beasts like that," said the first speaker. "Why not shell the darned things straight off and finish ’em?" said the little dark man. "You can’t tell what they might do. "Where’s your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain’t no time."

Do it in a rush, that’s my tip, and do it now." So they debated it. After a while I left them, and headed to the railway station to grab as many morning papers as I could."

I wasn’t going to bore anyone with a long description of that morning and the even longer afternoon. I didn’t even manage to catch a glimpse of the common - even the Horsell and Chobham church towers were under military control.

The soldiers I talked to were clueless, and the officers were just as mysterious as they were busy. People in town seemed pretty relaxed now that the military was around, and I finally heard from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common.

The soldiers had made everyone living on the edges of Horsell lock up and leave their homes. I got back to lunch around two, totally wiped - the day was seriously hot and gloomy. To cool off, I took a cold shower that afternoon.

Around four-thirty, I headed to the railway station to grab an evening paper. The morning papers had only given a really inaccurate account of how Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others were killed. But I already knew most of it. The Martians weren’t showing themselves at all.

They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a constant sound of hammering and a stream of smoke coming out. They were clearly gearing up for a fight. "More attempts have been made to signal, but without success," was the standard response in the papers.

A sapper told me it was some guy in a ditch waving a flag on a long pole. The Martians ignored these advances just like we’d ignore a cow mooing. I have to admit, seeing all that weaponry, all that preparation, really got to me.

My imagination went wild, and I imagined defeating the invaders a dozen different ways - it was like those old schoolboy fantasies of battles and heroism came flooding back. It didn’t seem like a fair fight, not really. They seemed so helpless stuck down there in that pit.

Around three o’clock, I started hearing a muffled boom coming at regular intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone. I learned that the smoldering pine forest where the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled, hoping to destroy it before it opened up.

It wasn’t until about five, though, that a field gun arrived in Chobham to use against the first group of Martians.

Around six in the evening, as I was having tea with my wife in the summerhouse, talking excitedly about the battle that was about to happen, I heard a muffled explosion from the common, followed immediately by a burst of gunfire.

Right after that came a violent crash, really close by, that shook the ground. I ran out onto the lawn, and I saw the tops of the trees around the Oriental College burst into smoky red flames, and the tower of the little church next to it collapse into rubble.

The pinnacle of the mosque had disappeared, and the roof of the college itself looked like a hundred-ton gun had been blasting away at it.

One of our chimneys cracked like it had been shot at, crumbled, and a shower of broken red fragments clattered down the tiles, piling up on the flower bed by my study window. My wife and I just stared in amazement.

Then I realized that the top of Maybury Hill was now within range of the Martians’ Heat-Ray now that the college was out of the way. I grabbed my wife’s arm, and without any ceremony, pulled her out onto the road.

Then I went back inside to get the servant, telling her I’d go upstairs myself for the box she was begging for. "We can’t possibly stay here," I said. And as I spoke, the gunfire started up again on the common. "But where are we supposed to go?" my wife asked, terrified. I was puzzled.

Then I remembered her cousins in Leatherhead. "Leatherhead!" I shouted over the sudden noise. She looked away from me downhill. People were coming out of their houses, shocked. "How are we going to get to Leatherhead?" she asked.

I saw a bunch of cavalry ride under the railway bridge as I looked down the hill; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College; two others jumped off and started running from house to house.

The sun, shining through the smoke rising from the tops of the trees, looked blood red and threw a weird, bright light on everything. "Stop here," I said; "you’re safe here. Then I took off at once for the Spotted Dog, because I knew the landlord had a horse and dog cart.

I ran, because I figured everyone on this side of the hill would be moving any minute. I found him in his bar, totally unaware of what was happening behind his house. A guy was standing with his back to me, talking to him. "I need a pound," said the landlord, "and I don’t have anyone to drive it."

"I’ll give you two," I said, over the stranger’s shoulder. "What for? "And I’ll bring it back by midnight," I said. "Seriously?" said the landlord. "What’s the rush? I’m selling a little pig. Two pounds, and you bring it back? What’s going on?"

I quickly explained that I had to leave my home, and that’s how I got the dog cart. At the time, it didn't seem as urgent that the landlord should leave his.

I made sure the cart was there and then, drove it down the road, and, leaving it with my wife and servant, rushed into my house and packed a few valuables, like the silver we had, and so on. The beech trees below the house were burning while I did this, and the fences up the road glowed red.

While I was doing this, one of the cavalry guys ran up. He was going from house to house, telling people to leave. He was going on as I came out of my front door, lugging my treasures, wrapped in a tablecloth. I shouted after him: "What’s the news?"

He turned, stared, mumbled something about "crawling out in a thing like a dish cover," and ran on to the gate of the house at the crest. A sudden swirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment.

I ran to my neighbor’s door and knocked to make sure of what I already knew - that his wife had gone to London with him and had locked up their house.

I went in again, according to my promise, to get my servant’s box, lugged it out, put it beside her on the back of the dog cart, and then grabbed the reins and jumped up into the driver’s seat beside my wife.

In another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise, and speeding down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill towards Old Woking. Ahead was a quiet, sunny landscape - wheat fields on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw the doctor’s cart ahead of me.

At the bottom of the hill I turned to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick plumes of black smoke streaked with threads of red fire were shooting up into the still air, and casting dark shadows on the green treetops eastward.

The smoke already stretched far out to the east and west - to the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted with people running towards us.

And very faint now, but very clear through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whir of a machine gun that soon stopped, and the occasional crack of rifles. Apparently the Martians were setting everything on fire within range of their Heat-Ray.

I’m not a great driver, and I had to pay close attention to the horse right away. When I looked back again, the second hill had hidden the black smoke. I whipped the horse, and gave him a loose rein until Woking and Send were between us and that shaking chaos.

I passed the doctor’s cart between Woking and Send.