The world of the war

The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful

things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace

habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that

was to topple that social order headlong. If on Friday night you had taken a pair

of compasses and drawn a circle with a radius of five miles round the Woking

sand-pits, I doubt if you would have had one human being outside it, unless it

were some relation of Stent or of the three or four cyclists or London people

lying dead on the common, whose emotions or habits were at all affected by the

new-comers. Many people had heard of the cylinder, of course, and talked about

it in their leisure, but it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to

Germany would have done.

In London that night poor Henderson’s telegram describing the gradual

unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening paper, after

wiring for authentication from him and receiving no reply—the man was killed

—decided not to print a special edition.

Even within the five-mile circle the great majority of people were inert. I have

already described the behaviour of the men and women to whom I spoke. All

over the district people were dining and supping; working men were gardening

after the labours of the day, children were being put to bed, young people were

wandering through the lanes love-making, students sat over their books.

Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic

in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of

the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to

and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking,

sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years—as though no planet Mars

existed in the sky. Even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham that was the

case.

In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on,

others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and waiting, and

everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. A boy from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon’s news.

The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction,

mingled with their shouts of “Men from Mars!” Excited men came into the

station about nine o’clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more

disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling Londonwards

peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw only a rare,

flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow

and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more

serious than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the edge of the

common that any disturbance was perceptible. There were half a dozen villas

burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the

common side of the three villages, and the people there kept awake till dawn.

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd

remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or two adventurous

souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the

Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a light-ray, like the beam of

a warship’s searchlight swept the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to

follow. Save for such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the

charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A

noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.

So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre, sticking into the

skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the

poison was scarcely working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common,

smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in

contorted attitudes here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree.

Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation

had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it

had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently clog

vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless,

indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and ever and

again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.

About eleven a company of soldiers came through Horsell, and deployed

along the edge of the common to form a cordon. Later a second company

marched through Chobham to deploy on the north side of the common. Several

officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common earlier in the day,

and one, Major Eden, was reported to be missing. The colonel of the regiment

came to the Chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight.

The military authorities were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business.

About eleven, the next morning’s papers were able to say, a squadron of hussars,

two Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment started from

Aldershot.

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a

star fall from heaven into the pine woods to the northwest. It had a greenish

colour, and caused a silent brightness like summer lightning. This was the

second cylinder.