BOOK 2 CHAPTER FIVE
THE STILLNESS
My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door
between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty; every
scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on the
previous day. At that discovery I despaired for the first time. I took
no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day.
At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed
sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of
despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had become
deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear from the
pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to crawl
noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.
On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance
of alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that
stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and
tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by
the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping.
During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much of
the curate and of the manner of his death.
On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and thought
disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape. Whenever
I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the curate, or
of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a keen pain that
urged me to drink again and again. The light that came into the scullery
was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered imagination it seemed the
colour of blood.
On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to
find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in
the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured
obscurity.
It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar
sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as the
snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a dog's
nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This greatly
surprised me. At the scent of me he barked shortly.
I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I
should be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it would
be advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the attention of
the Martians.
I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" very softly; but he suddenly
withdrew his head and disappeared.
I listened--I was not deaf--but certainly the pit was still. I heard
a sound like the flutter of a bird's wings, and a hoarse croaking, but
that was all.
For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move
aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a faint
pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the
sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was
all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.
Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought
over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was not
a living thing in the pit.
I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery had
gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner,
certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the skeletons
of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in the sand.
Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the
mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the
north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The
pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish
afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of
escape had come. I began to tremble.
I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate
resolution, and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to the
top of the mound in which I had been buried so long.
I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was visible.
When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been a
straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed with
abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay,
and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus-shaped plants,
knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute their
footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but further a network of
red thread scaled the still living stems.
The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been
burned; their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed
windows and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their
roofless rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling
for its refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins.
Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of
men there were none.
The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly
bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that
covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! the
sweetness of the air!