In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two chapters I and the curate have been lurking(1) in the empty house at Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke. There I will resume. We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day—the day of the panic—in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black Smoke from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait in aching inactivity during those two weary(2) days.
My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man. I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence. My cousin I knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly(3). What was needed now was not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe that the Martians were moving Londonward and away from her. Such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful. I grew very weary and irritable with the curate’s perpetual ejaculations; I tired of the sight of his selfish despair. After some ineffectual remonstrance(4) I kept away from him, staying in a room—evidently a children’s schoolroom— containing globes, forms, and copybooks. When he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.
This story is from the H.G Wells edition of The War of the Worlds.
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This story is from the H.G Wells edition of The War of the Worlds.
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WRECKAGE
And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly1, all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.
WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE
After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have dozed again, for when presently I looked round I was alone.
WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON
As the dawn grew brighter we withdrew from the window from which we had watched the Martians, and went very quietly downstairs.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY
It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George’s Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford.
UNDER FOOT
In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two chapters I and the curate have been lurking1 in the empty house at Halliford whither we fled to escape the Black Smoke.
THE “THUNDER CHILD”
Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated1 the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties.
THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS
For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety. Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security.
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..
THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL
I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to Leatherhead.
THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD
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 an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute nonconductivity.
