Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS “London in danger of suffocation! The Kings- ton and Richmond defences forced! Fearful massacres in the Thames Valley!” And all about him—in the rooms below, in the houses on either side and across the road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne Park district and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn and St. John’s Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and indeed, through all the vastness of London from Ealing to East Ham—people were rubbing their eyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions, and dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the streets. It was the dawn of the great panic. London, which had gone to bed on Sunday night stupid and inert, was awakened in the small hours of Monday morning to a vivid sense of danger. Unable from his window to learn what was hap- pening, my brother went down and out into the street, just as the sky between the parapets of the houses grew pink with the early dawn. The flying people on foot and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment. “Black Smoke!’ he heard people crying, and again “Black Smoke!” The contagion of such a unanimous fear was in- evitable. As my brother hesitated on the door- step, he saw another newsvendor approaching him, and got a copy forthwith. The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers as he ran, for a shilling each—a grotesque mingling of profit and panic. And from this paper my brother read that catas- trophic despatch of the Commander-in-Chief: “The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets. They have smothered our batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are advancing slowly towards London, destroy- ing everything on the way. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Black Smoke but in instant flight.” That was all, but it was enough. The whole population of the great six-million city was stir- ring, slipping, running; presently it would be pour- ing en masse northward. “Black Smoke!” the voices cried. “Fire!” The bells of the neighboring church made a jangling tumult, a cart carelessly driven smashed amidst shrieks and curses against the water-trough up the street. Sickly yellow light went to and fro in the houses, and some of the passing cabs flaunted unextinguished lamps. And overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm. He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dress- ing-gown and shawl; her husband followed, ejacu- lating. As my brother began to realize the import of all these things, he turned hastily to his own room, 447 gether—into his pockets, and went out again into the streets. CHAPTER XV What Had Happened in Surrey T was while the curate had sat and talked so | wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was watching the fugitives stream over Westminster Bridge, that the Martians had resumed the offen- sive. So far as one can ascertain from the con- flicting accounts that have been put forth, the majority of them remained busied with prepara- tions in the Horsell pit until nine that night, hurry- ing on some operation that disengaged huge vol- umes of green smoke. But three certainly came out about eight o’clock and, advancing slowly and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford towards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the ex- pectant batteries against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow. They communicated with each other by means of siren-like howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another. It was this howling and the firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George’s Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford. The Ripley gunners, unsea- soned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a position, fired one wild, pre- mature, ineffectual volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village, and the Martian walked over their guns serenely without using his Heat-Ray, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he destroyed. The St. George’s Hill men, however, were better led or of a better mettle. Hidden by a pine-wood as they were, they seem to have been quite unex- pected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a thousand yards’ range. The shells flashed all round the Martian, and they saw him advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a prolonged ululation, and imme- diately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground, and simul- taneously both his companions brought their Heat- Rays to bear on the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine-trees all about the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were already running over the crest of the hill escaped. After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half-hour. The Martian who had been overthrown crawled tedi- ously out of his hood, a pat brown Hee e, oddly 5 f lig