Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

446 Bridge, and close behind him came a hay wagon with five or six respectable-looking people in it, and some boxes and bundles. The faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance con- trasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best ap- pearance of the people on the omnibuses. People in fashionable clothing peeped at them out of cabs. They stopped at the Square as if undecided which way to take, and finally turned eastward along the Strand. Some way after these came a man in work- day clothes, riding one of those old-fashioned tri- cycles with a small front-wheel. He was dirty and white in the face. My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such people. He had a vague idea that he might see something of me. He noticed an un- usual number of police regulating the traffic. Some of the refugees were exchanging news with the people on the omnibuses. One was professing to have seen the Martians. “Boilers on stilts, I tell you, striding along like men.” Most of them were excited and animated by their strange experience. Beyond Victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade with these arrivals. At all the street corners groups of people were reading papers, talk- ing excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors. They seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like the Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatis- factory answers from most. None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who assured him that Woking had been entirely destroyed on the previous night. “T come from Byfleet,” he said; “a man on a bi- cycle came through the place in the early morning, and ran from door to door warning us to come away. Then came soldiers. We went out to look, and there were clouds of smoke to the south—nothing but smoke, and not a soul coming that way. Then we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from Weybridge. So I’ve locked up my house and come on,” At that time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience, About eight o’clock, a noise of heavy firing was distinctly audible all over the south of London. My brother could not hear it for the traffic in the main streets, but by striking through the quiet back- streets to the river he was able to distinguish it quite plainly. He walked back from Westminster to his apart- ments near Regent’s Park about two. He was now very anxious on my account, and disturbed at the evident magnitude of the trouble. His mind was inclined to run, even as mine had run on Saturday, on military details. He thought of all those silent expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic country- side; he tried to imagine “boilers on stilts” a hun- dred feet high. There were one or two cartloads of refugees pass- ing along Oxford Street, and several in the Maryle- bone Road, but so slowly was the news spreading that Regent Street and Portland their 1 Sunda: Road were full of | u1 AMAZING STORIES talked in groups, and along the edge of Regent’s Park there were as many silent couples “walking out” together under the scattered gas-lamps as ever there had been. The night was warm and still, and a little oppressive, the sound of guns continued in- termittently, and after midnight there seemed to be sheet lightning in the south. He read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me. He was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly. He returned and tried to divert his attention by his examination notes in vain. He went to bed a little after mid- night, and he was awakened out of some lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door-knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamor of bells. Red reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay aston- ished, wondering whether day had come or the world had gone mad. Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window. His room was an attic, and as he thrust his head out, up and down the street there were a dozen echoes to the noise of his window-sash, and heads in every kind of night disarray appeared. In- quiries were being shouted. ‘They are coming!” bawled a policeman, hammering at the door; “the Martians are coming!” and hurried to the next door. The noise of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street Barracks, and every church within earshot was hard at work killing sleep with a vehement disorderly tocsin. There was a noise of doors opening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from darkness into yellow illumination, Up the street came galloping a closed carriage, bursting abruptly into noise at the corner, rising to a clattering climax under the window, and dying away slowly in the distance. Close on the rear of this came a couple of cabs, the forerunners of a long procession of flying vehicles, going for the most part to Chalk Farm Station, where the North- Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into Euston. | i a long time my brother stared out of the window in blank astonishment, watching the policemen hammering at door after door, and de- livering their incomprehensible message. Then the door behind him opened, and the man who lodged across the landing came in, dressed only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose about his waist, his hair disordered from his pillow. “What the devil is it?” he asked. “A fire? What a devil of a row!” They both craned their heads out of the window, straining to hear what the policemen were shout- ing. People were coming out of the side-streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking. “What the devil is it all about?” said my broth- er’s fellow-lodger. My brother answered him vaguely and began to — dress, running with each garment to the window in order to miss nothing of the growing excite- ment of the streets. _ And presently. men seline ie baw