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with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They come from Molesey and
Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy
firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once before the
Martians are coming. We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we
thought it was thunder. What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't
get out of their pit, can they?"
My brother could not tell him.
Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the clients
of the underground railway, and that the Sunday excursionists began to return
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from all over the South-Western "lung" -- Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park,
Kew, and so forth -- at unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything
more than vague hearsay to tell of. Everyone connected with the terminus
seemed ill-tempered.
About five o'clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely excited
by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost invariably
closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western stations, and the
passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with
soldiers. These were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham
to cover Kingston. There was an exchange of pleasantries: "You'll get eaten!"
"We're the beast-tamers!" and so forth. A little while after that a squad of
police came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms,
and my brother went out into the street again.
The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army
lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of loafers
were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in
patches. The sun was just setting, and the Clock Tower and the Houses of
Parliament rose against one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to
imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple
cloud. There was talk of a floating body. One of the men there, a reservist he
said he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the
west.
In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs who had just
rushed out of Fleet Street with still wet newspapers and staring placards.
"Dreadful catastrophe!" They bawled one to the other down Wellington Street.
"Fighting at Weybridge! Full description! Repulse of the Martians! London in
Danger!" He had to give threepence for a copy of that paper.
Then it was, and then only, that he realised something of the full power and
terror of these monsters. He learned that they were not merely a handful of
small sluggish creatures, but that they were minds swaying vast mechanical
bodies; and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power that even
the mightiest guns could not stand against them.
They were described as "vast spider like machines, nearly a hundred feet
high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a beam
of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had been planted in
the country about Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district
and London. Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and
one, by a happy chance, had been destroyed. In the other cases the shells had
missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy
losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the despatch was
optimistic.
The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They had
retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about Woking.
Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides.
Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich --
even from the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from
Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily
placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a
vast or rapid concentration of military material.
Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by
high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and distributed. No
doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the strangest and gravest
description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No
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doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the
outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our millions.
The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders, that
at the outside there could not be more than five in each cylinder -- fifteen
altogether. And one at least was disposed of -- perhaps more. The public would
be fairly warned of the approach of danger, and elaborate measures were being
taken for the protection of the people in the threatened southwestern suburbs.
And so, with reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of
the authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed.
This was printed in enormous type on paper so fresh that it was still wet,
and there had been no time to add a word of comment. It was curious, my [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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