CHAPTER EIGHT
FRIDAY NIGHT
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.