TABLE OF CONTENTS
The War of the Worlds
And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least...
In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly:...
"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one," he said.
But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and...
"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in it--men in it! Half roasted to...
CHAPTER THREE
"REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,"
"Keep back! Keep back!"
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of...
I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate...
Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous greenish smoke came...
The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where its roadways lay grey...
As yet, of course, few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had opened,...
CHAPTER SEVEN
But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying...
But I did not consider these points at the time, and so my reasoning was...
In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on, others were...
A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a star...
"Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one.
About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey...
I explained hastily that I had to leave my home, and so secured the dog...
My wife was curiously silent throughout the drive, and seemed oppressed with forebodings of evil....
Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and...
I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a...
I had a vague idea of going on to my own house, and that was...
After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did...
They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be. ...
"I lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter of...
When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, and I looked...
Except the lodge at the Orphanage, which was still on fire, none of the houses...
"I do," I said; and he turned his horse southward again.
No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established; the whole place...
"What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!" said a man near me...
In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading halfway across....
My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling, like that of...
I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a...
The hot water from the Martian's overthrow drifted downstream with me, so that for the...
"What are we?" I answered, clearing my throat.
And even as I spoke he sprang to his feet and stopped me by a...
I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning "all London...
One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, containing people who had...
They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the...
My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such people. He...
His room was an attic and as he thrust his head out, up and down...
And from this paper my brother read that catastrophic dispatch of the Commander-in-Chief:
The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few paces,...
But facing that crescent everywhere--at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton, Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south...
Moved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I perceived a third of...
But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to remain until...
One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and...
For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The...
"Take this!" said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver.
Mrs. Elphinstone--that was the name of the woman in white--would listen to no reasoning, and...
It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point...
But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. ...
The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house.
Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was white and pale,...
Directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide,...
He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had replaced the desertions of the...
At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her...
Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the approaching...
A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the Martian reeled...
The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the evening star trembled...
For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, save that...
Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks...
We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood...
The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed over...
I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed; and...
Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see...
And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem...
In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were...
The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single round drum...
While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and noting each strange...
As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so intensified our distress...
The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought to the...
It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw...
And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. For two vast days...
"Nay," shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing likewise and extending his...
It worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door opened.
On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to find...
The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls stood,...
At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of...
For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that...
And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate body,...
As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and filthy...
"It is all over with humanity," I said. "If they can do that they...
I assented.
"Eh!" he said, with his eyes shining. "I've thought it out, eh?"
"No," I cried, "that's impossible! No human being----"
The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.
"We're working well," he said. He put down his spade. "Let us knock off...
"There's some champagne in the cellar," he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note--great waves of sound sweeping down the broad,...
I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of "Ulla, ulla,...
An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I...
I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even as the rising...
The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors...
Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what they...
All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and unfamiliar;...
I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and...
A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the...
Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life...
