It is still a matter of wonder how the
Martians are able to slay men so swiftly and so silently. Many think that in
some way they are able to generate intense heat in a chamber of practically
absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam
against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of
unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam
of light. But no one has absolutely proved these details. However it is done,
it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and
invisible, instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into
flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts
glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam.
That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the pit, charred
and distorted beyond recognition, and all night long the common from Horsell to
Maybury was deserted and brightly ablaze.
The news of the massacre probably reached
Chobham, Woking, and Ottershaw about the same time. In Woking the shops had
closed when the tragedy happened, and a number of people, shop people and so
forth, attracted by the stories they had heard, were walking over the Horsell
Bridge and along the road between the hedges that runs out at last upon the
common. You may imagine the young people brushed up after the labors of the
day, and making this novelty, as they would make any novelty, the excuse for
walking together and enjoying a trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself
the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming…. As yet, of course, few
people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had opened, though poor Henderson
had sent a messenger on a bicycle to the post office with a special wire to an
evening paper. As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they
found little knots of people talking excitedly and peering at the spinning
mirror over the sandpits and the new-comers were, no doubt, soon infected by
the excitement of the occasion.
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By half
past eight, when the Deputation was destroyed, there may have been a crowd of
three hundred people or more at this place, besides those who had left the road
to approach the Martians nearer. There
were three policemen too, one of whom was mounted, doing their best, under
instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter them from approaching
the cylinder. There was some booing from those more thoughtless and excitable
souls to whom a crowd is always an occasion for noise and horseplay. Stent and
Ogilvy, anticipating some possibilities of a collision, had telegraphed from
Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians emerged, for the help of a
company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence. After
that, they returned to lead that ill-fated advance. The description of their
death, as it was seen by the crowd, tallies very closely with my own
impressions: the three puffs of green smoke, the deep humming note, and the
flashes of flame.
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But that a crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only the fact that a
hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the Heat-Ray saved them.
Had the elevation of the parabolic mirror been a few yards higher, none could
have lived to tell the tale. They saw the flashes and the men falling and an
invisible hand, as it were, lit the bushes as it hurried towards them through
the twilight. Then, with a whistling note that rose above the droning of the
pit, the beam swung close over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech
trees that line the road, and splitting the bricks, smashing the windows,
firing the window frames, and bringing down in crumbling ruin a portion of the
gable of the house nearest the corner. In the sudden thud, hiss, and glare of
the igniting trees, the panic-stricken crowd seems to have swayed hesitatingly
for some moments. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road and
single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire. Then came a
crying from the common. There were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a mounted
policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over his
head, screaming.
‘They’re
coming!’ a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was turning and pushing
at those behinds, in order to clear their way to Woking again. They must have
bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep. Where the road grows narrow and black
between the high banks the crowd jammed, and a desperate struggle occurred. All
that crowd did not escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy,
were crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the
darkness.
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