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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 14. IN LONDON
My younger brother was in London when the Martians fell at Woking.
He was a medical student studying for an exam that was coming soon, and he heard nothing about their arrival until Saturday morning.
The morning papers on Saturday contained long special articles on the planet Mars and life on the planets.
They also included a short, vaguely worded telegram.
Its shortness made it all the more striking.
The Martians, alarmed by the approach of a crowd, had killed a number of people with a quick-firing gun, so the story went.
"The telegram ended with the words, "Formidable as they seem to be.
"Formidable as they seem to be, the Martians haven't moved from the pit into which they have fallen, and, indeed, seem unable to do so."
"Probably this is because of the relative strength of the earth's gravitational energy." On that last point their leader-writer expanded very comfortingly.
Of course all the students in the biology class at the cram school, which my brother went to that day, were intensely interested.
But there were no signs of any unusual excitement in the streets.
The afternoon papers printed small pieces of news under big headlines.
They had nothing to tell beyond the movements of troops around the common, and the burning of the pine woods between Woking and Weybridge, until eight.
Then the St. James's Gazette, in an extra-special edition, announced the simple fact of the interruption of telegraphic communication.
This was thought to be because of falling burning pine trees across the line.
Nothing more of the fighting was known that night, the night of my drive to Leatherhead and back.
My brother was not worried about us, because he knew from newspaper descriptions that the cylinder was two miles from my house.
He decided to come down that night to me, in order, as he says, to see the Things before they were killed.
He sent a telegram, which never reached me, around four o'clock, and spent the evening at a music hall.
In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my brother reached Waterloo in a cab.
On the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night.
The nature of the accident he couldn't find out, indeed, the railway authorities didn't clearly know at that time.
There was very little excitement in the station.
The officials didn't realize anything more than a breakdown had happened between Byfleet and Woking junction.
They were running the theatre trains round by Virginia Water or Guildford, these trains usually passed through Woking.
They were busy making the necessary arrangements to change the route of the Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League trips.
A nighttime newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, whom he looks a bit like, stopped him and tried to interview him.
Few people, except the railway officials, connected the breakdown with the Martians.
I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning "all London was excited by the news from Woking."
As a matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very exaggerated phrase.
Plenty of Londoners didn't hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning.
Those who did took some time to understand all that the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers meant.
The majority of people in London don't read Sunday papers.
Personal safety is a deep habit in Londoners' minds.
Surprising news is also common in the papers.
"So they could read without fear, "Last night at seven, the Martians left the cylinder.
Moving under metal shields, they destroyed Woking station and nearby houses.
"They also killed the whole Cardigan Regiment battalion." No details are known.
Machine guns have been completely useless against their armour, the field guns have been disabled by them.
Flying hussars have been galloping into Chertsey.
The Martians seem to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or Windsor.
Great worry prevails in West Surrey, and earthworks are being built to stop the advance towards London.
" That was how the Sunday Sun put it, and a clever and remarkably quick "
"Handbook" article in the Referee compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly let loose in a village.
No one in London knew for sure about the nature of the armoured Martians.
There was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be slow and crawling.
Such expressions appeared in almost all the earlier reports.
None of the telegrams could have been written by an eyewitness of their advance.
The Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came in, some even without it.
But there was practically nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the news they had.
It was stated that the people of Walton and Weybridge, and all the area were pouring along the roads towards London, and that was all.
My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still not knowing what had happened on the previous night.
There he heard mentions of the invasion, and a special prayer for peace, Coming out, he bought a Referee.
He became alarmed at the news in this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if communication was restored.
The buses, carriages, cyclists, and countless people walking in their best clothes seemed hardly affected by the strange news that the newsvendors were spreading.
People were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only because of the local residents.
At the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted.
The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had suddenly stopped.
My brother could get very little exact detail out of them.
"There's fighting going on around Weybridge" was the extent of their information.
The train service was now very disorganized.
Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western network were standing around the station.
One grey-headed old gentleman came and complained bitterly to my brother about the South-Western Company.
"It needs to be exposed," he said.
One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston.
They carried people who had gone boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air.
A man in a blue and white blazer spoke to my brother, full of strange news.
"There are crowds of people driving into Kingston in carts and carriages and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said.
"They come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton,"
"And they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to leave at once because the Martians are coming."
"We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder."
"What the devil does it all mean?"
"The Martians can't get out of their pit, can they?"
My brother couldn't tell him anything more than that, he knew only rumours.
Afterwards he found the vague alarm had spread to passengers of the underground railway, and Sunday excursionists were returning from all over the South-Western "lung".
Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so on, at unusually early hours, but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of.
Everyone connected with the station seemed ill-tempered.
About five o'clock, the gathering crowd in the station was hugely excited.
The line of communication between the South-Eastern and South-Western stations opened.
This line is almost always closed, Carriage trucks passed through, carrying huge guns and carriages packed with soldiers.
These were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston.
There was an exchange of jokes, "You'll get eaten!" "We're the beast-tamers!" and so on.
A little while after that a squad of police came into the station and began to clear the public off the platforms.
My brother then went out into the street again.
The church bells were ringing for evening service, and a squad of Salvation Army girls came singing down Waterloo Road.
On the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came floating down the stream in patches.
The sun was just setting, the Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against a peaceful sky of gold.
It was crossed with long horizontal stripes of reddish-purple cloud.
There was talk of a floating body.
One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told my brother he had seen the heliograph flashing in the west.
In Wellington Street my brother met two rough men rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet newspapers and staring placards.
"Dreadful catastrophe!" they shouted one to the other down Wellington Street.
"Fighting at Weybridge! Full description! Repulse of the Martians! London in Danger!" He had to give threepence for a copy of that paper.
Then it was, and then only, that he realized something of the full power and terror of these monsters.
He learned they weren't just a handful of small, slow creatures.
They were minds controlling huge mechanical bodies.
They could move quickly and strike with great power.
Even the mightiest guns couldn't stand against them.
They were described as huge spiderlike machines a hundred feet high, able to move as fast as an express train and shoot a beam of heat.
Hidden batteries, mostly of field guns, had been placed in the country around Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district and London.
Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a lucky chance, had been destroyed.
In the other cases the shells had missed, and the batteries had been at once destroyed by the Heat-Rays.
Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was hopeful.
The Martians had been pushed back, they weren't impossible to hurt.
They had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle around Woking.
Signallers with heliographs were moving forward towards them from all sides.
Guns were being moved quickly from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich, even from the north, among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich.
Altogether one hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, mostly covering London.
Never before in England had there been such a huge or rapid concentration of military material.
Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high explosives, which were being quickly made and distributed.
No doubt, the report said, the situation was of the strangest and most serious kind, but the public was urged to avoid and discourage panic.
No doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the most there couldn't be more than twenty of them against our millions.
From the cylinders' size, the authorities thought there could be at most five in each, fifteen in all.
And one at least was dealt with, perhaps more.
The public would be warned of the approaching danger, and careful measures were taken to protect people in the threatened southwestern suburbs.
And so, with repeated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the authorities to handle the difficulty, this almost-official statement ended.
This was printed in huge type on paper so fresh that it was still wet.
And there had been no time to add a word of comment.
It was strange, my brother said, to see how ruthlessly the usual contents of the paper had been cut and taken out to give this place.
All down Wellington Street people shook out the pink sheets and read them.
The Strand was suddenly noisy with the voices of an army of sellers following these first ones.
Men came climbing off buses to get copies.
Certainly this news excited people intensely, whatever their previous lack of interest.
The shutters of a map shop in the Strand were being taken down.
My brother said a man in his Sunday clothes was visible inside the window.
He wore lemon-yellow gloves and was quickly fastening maps of Surrey to the glass.
Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his hand, my brother saw some of the people fleeing from West Surrey.
There was a man with his wife and two boys and some items of furniture in a cart such as greengrocers use.
He was driving from Westminster Bridge, and close behind him came a hay waggon with five or six respectable people and boxes.
The faces of these people were tired and worried, and their whole appearance contrasted strongly with the Sunday-best appearance of the people on the buses.
People in fashionable clothing looked at them out of cabs.
They stopped at the Square as if unsure which way to go, and finally turned eastward along the Strand.
Some way behind these came a man in workday clothes, riding one of those old-fashioned tricycles with a small front wheel.
He was dirty and white in the face.
My brother turned down towards Victoria, and met a number of such people.
He had a vague idea that he might see something of me.
He noticed an unusual number of police controlling the traffic.
Some of the refugees were exchanging news with the people on the buses.
One was claiming to have seen the Martians.
"Boilers on stilts, I tell you, walking along like men." Most of them were excited and lively because of their strange experience.
Beyond Victoria the pubs were doing a lively business with these arrivals.
At all the street corners groups of people were reading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors.
They seemed to increase as night came on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day.
My brother spoke to several of these people running away and got unsatisfactory answers from most.
None of them could tell him any news of Woking except one man, who assured him that Woking had been completely destroyed on the previous night.
"I come from Byfleet,"
"I come from Byfleet," he said.
"A man on a bicycle came through early and ran from door to door warning us to leave."
"Then soldiers arrived, and we went out to look, there were clouds of smoke to the south, nothing but smoke."
"We heard guns at Chertsey and people coming from Weybridge, so I've locked up my house and come on".
People in the streets blamed the authorities for failing to drive away the invaders without such trouble.
About eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was clearly heard all over the south of London.
He couldn't hear it because of the traffic in the main roads.
By going through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to hear it quite plainly.
He walked from Westminster to his rooms near Regent's Park, about two.
He was now very worried about me, and disturbed at the clear size of the trouble.
His mind was inclined to run, even as mine had run on Saturday, on military details.
He thought of all those silent, waiting guns, of the suddenly wandering countryside, he tried to imagine "boilers on stilts" a hundred feet high.
There were one or two cartloads of refugees on Oxford Street.
Several more were on the Marylebone Road.
But the news spread slowly, Regent Street and Portland Place were full of Sunday-night walkers.
They talked in groups, Along Regent's Park, silent couples walked together under the gas lamps, just as before.
The night was warm, still, and a little heavy, and the sound of guns continued from time to time.
After midnight there seemed to be sheet lightning in the south.
He read and re-read the paper, fearing the worst had happened to me.
He was restless, and after supper wandered out again without purpose.
He returned and tried in vain to turn his attention to his exam notes.
He went to bed a little after midnight.
He was woken from frightening dreams in the early hours of Monday.
The sounds included door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a noise of bells.
Red reflections danced on the ceiling, For a moment he lay astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad.
Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the window.
His room was an attic, As he stuck his head out, the noise of his window sash echoed up and down the street.
Heads in every kind of night disorder appeared, Questions were being shouted.
"They're coming!" shouted a policeman, hammering at the door, "the Martians are coming!" and hurried to the next door.
Drums and trumpets sounded from the Albany Street Barracks, and every nearby church rang a loud, disorderly bell to wake people.
There was a noise of doors opening, and window after window in the houses opposite flashed from darkness into yellow light.
A closed carriage galloped up the street, burst into noise at the corner, rose under the window, then died away in the distance.
Close behind this came a couple of cabs.
They were the first of a long line of fleeing vehicles.
Most were going to Chalk Farm station.
There, the North-Western special trains were loading up.
They didn't come down the slope into Euston.
For a long time my brother stared from the window in astonishment, watching policemen hammering at door after door and delivering impossible message.
Then the door behind him opened, and the man who lived across the landing came in.
He was dressed only in shirt, trousers, and slippers, his braces loose around his waist, his hair messy from his pillow.
"What the devil is it?" he asked.
"A fire? What a devil of a noise!"
They both stuck their heads out of the window, straining to hear what the policemen were shouting.
People were coming out of the side streets, and standing in groups at the corners talking.
"What the devil is it all about?" said my brother's fellow lodger.
My brother answered him, began to dress, running with each piece of clothing to the window to miss nothing of the growing excitement.
And soon men selling unusually early newspapers came shouting into the street,
"London in danger of suffocation! The Kingston and Richmond defences forced! Terrible killings in the Thames Valley!"
All around him, in the rooms below and in the houses on each side, people were rubbing their eyes.
Across the road and behind in the Park Terraces, they opened windows to stare out.
In the hundred other streets of Marylebone, Westbourne Park, and St. Pancras, they asked pointless questions.
Westward in Kilburn, St. John's Wood, and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch, Highbury, Haggerston, and Hoxton, they dressed quickly.
Through all the huge city of London, from Ealing to East Ham, the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the streets.
It was the dawn of the great panic.
London, which had gone to bed on Sunday night unaware, was woken in the early hours of Monday to a sense of danger.
He could not learn what was happening from his window, so my brother went down and out into the street.
The sky between the tops of the houses grew pink with the early dawn.
The people running away on foot and in vehicles grew more numerous every moment.
"Black Smoke!" he heard people crying, and again "Black Smoke!" The spread of such a shared fear was unavoidable.
As my brother hesitated on the doorstep, he saw another newsvendor approaching, and got a paper at once.
The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran, a strange mix of profit and panic.
And from this paper my brother read that terrible dispatch of the Commander-in-Chief,
"The Martians are able to send out huge clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets."
"They have smothered our batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are advancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way."
"It's impossible to stop them."
"There's no safety from the Black Smoke except in immediate flight."
That was all, but it was enough.
The whole population of the great six-million city was stirring, slipping, running, soon it would be pouring in a mass northward.
"Black Smoke!" the voices cried.
"Fire!"
The bells of the nearby church made a jangling noise, a cart carelessly driven crashed, amid screams and curses, against the water trough up the street.
Sickly yellow lights went back and forth in the houses, and some of the passing cabs showed unextinguished lamps.
And overhead the dawn was growing brighter, clear and steady and calm.
He heard footsteps running back and forth in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him.
His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl, her husband followed, making sounds of surprise.
My brother began to understand the meaning of all these things.
He turned quickly to his own room.
He put all his available money, about ten pounds, into his pockets.
Then he went out again into the streets.