CHAPTER SEVEN

HOW I REACHED HOME



For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight

except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling

through the heather. All about me gathered the invisible

terrors of the Martians; that pitiless sword of heat seemed

whirling to and fro, flourishing overhead before it descended

and smote me out of life. I came into the road between the

crossroads and Horsell, and ran along this to the crossroads.



At last I could go no further; I was exhausted with the

violence of my emotion and of my flight, and I staggered and

fell by the wayside. That was near the bridge that crosses

the canal by the gasworks. I fell and lay still.



I must have remained there some time.



I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I

could not clearly understand how I came there. My terror

had fallen from me like a garment. My hat had gone, and

my collar had burst away from its fastener. A few minutes

before, there had only been three real things before me--the

immensity of the night and space and nature, my own feeble-

ness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it

was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered

abruptly. There was no sensible transition from one state of

mind to the other. I was immediately the self of every day

again--a decent, ordinary citizen. The silent common, the

impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as if they had

been in a dream. I asked myself had these latter things indeed

happened? I could not credit it.



I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the

bridge. My mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves

seemed drained of their strength. I dare say I staggered

drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a

workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little

boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to

speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a

meaningless mumble and went on over the bridge.



Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of

white, firelit smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows,

went flying south--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone.

A dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses

in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental

Terrace. It was all so real and so familiar. And that behind

me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I told myself,

could not be.



Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know

how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the

strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world

about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from some-

where inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out

of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very

strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my

dream.



But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity

and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There

was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric

lamps were all alight. I stopped at the group of people.



"What news from the common?" said I.



There were two men and a woman at the gate.



"Eh?" said one of the men, turning.



"What news from the common?" I said.



"'Ain't yer just BEEN there?" asked the men.



"People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman

over the gate. "What's it all abart?"



"Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the

creatures from Mars?"



"Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks";

and all three of them laughed.



I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell

them what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken

sentences.



"You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home.



I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went

into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so

soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things

I had seen. The dinner, which was a cold one, had already

been served, and remained neglected on the table while I

told my story.



"There is one thing," I said, to allay the fears I had

aroused; "they are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl.

They may keep the pit and kill people who come near them,

but they cannot get out of it. . . . But the horror of them!"



"Don't, dear!" said my wife, knitting her brows and putting

her hand on mine.



"Poor Ogilvy!" I said. "To think he may be lying dead

there!"



My wife at least did not find my experience incredible.

When I saw how deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.



"They may come here," she said again and again.



I pressed her to take wine, and tried to reassure her.



"They can scarcely move," I said.



I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that

Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians estab-

lishing themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on

the gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the

force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of

Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more

than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength 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 influ-

ences.



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, temper-

ing 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.

****

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