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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 4. THE CYLINDER OPENS
When I returned to the common, the sun was setting.
Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two people were coming back.
The crowd around the pit had grown, and they stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky.
There were maybe two hundred people, I heard raised voices, and it looked like some kind of struggle was happening near the pit.
Strange thoughts passed through my mind, As I got closer, I heard Stent's voice,
"Keep back! Keep back!"
A boy came running towards me, breathless and eyes wide with fear.
"It's movin'," he said to me as he passed.
"It's screwin' and screwin' out. I don't like it. I'm goin' home, I'm."
I went on to the crowd, there were really, I think, two or three hundred people pushing and shoving each other.
The one or two ladies there were just as active as anyone else.
"He's fallen in the pit!" someone shouted.
"Keep back!" several people said.
The crowd swayed a little, and I pushed my way through.
Everyone seemed very excited, I heard a strange humming sound from the pit.
"I say!" said Ogilvy.
"Help keep these idiots back. We don't know what's in the confounded thing, you know!"
I saw a young man, a shop assistant in Woking, standing on the cylinder and trying to climb out of the hole.
The crowd had pushed him into the cylinder's opening, and he struggled to climb out.
The end of the cylinder was being unscrewed from inside.
Nearly two feet of shiny screw stuck out.
Someone bumped into me, and I almost fell onto the top of the screw.
I turned, and as I did, the screw must have come out, because the lid of the cylinder fell onto the gravel with a loud crash.
I stuck my elbow into the person behind me and turned my head back towards the thing.
For a moment, that round opening seemed completely black, the sunset was in my eyes.
I think everyone expected to see a man come out.
Maybe something a little different from us earthly men, but basically a man.
I know I did, but as I looked, I soon saw something moving in the shadow.
There were greyish, wavy movements, one above another, and then two bright disks, Like eyes.
Something like a grey snake, as thick as a walking stick, curled out of the writhing middle and wriggled towards me.
And then another one rose up from the writhing mass, glistening in the light.
A sudden chill went through me, a woman behind me let out a loud scream.
I half turned, keeping my eyes on the cylinder, from which other tentacles were now coming out.
I started pushing my way back from the edge of the pit.
I saw surprise turn to horror on the faces of the people around me.
I heard unclear shouts on all sides.
Everyone was moving backwards, I saw the shopman still struggling on the edge of the pit.
I found myself alone, and I saw the people on the other side of the pit running away, Stent among them.
I looked again at the cylinder, and uncontrollable fear grabbed me, I stood frozen, staring.
A big, greyish, round shape, about the size of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder.
As it bulged up and caught the light, it shone like wet leather.
Two large, dark eyes were looking steadily at me.
The mass around them, the head of the thing, was round, and you could say it had a face.
There was a mouth under the eyes, with no lips.
Its edge shook and panted, and saliva dripped down.
The whole creature moved and pulsed violently.
A long, tentacle-like arm grabbed the edge of the cylinder, and another waved in the air.
Those who have never seen a living Martian can hardly imagine the strange horror of its appearance.
The creature had a strange V-shaped mouth with a pointed upper lip.
It had no brow ridges and no chin under its wedge-shaped lower lip.
The mouth shook constantly, it had groups of tentacles and breathed heavily in Earth's strange atmosphere.
Its movements were clearly difficult and painful due to Earth's greater gravity.
Above all, the extraordinary intensity of the huge eyes.
It was at once alive, intense, inhuman, crippled, and monstrous.
There was something like a fungus in the oily brown skin, something in the slow, clumsy movements that was completely disgusting.
Even at this first meeting, this first look, I was filled with disgust and fear.
Suddenly the monster disappeared, toppling over the edge and vanishing into the pit.
It had fallen over the edge of the cylinder and into the pit, with a thud like a big piece of leather hitting the ground.
I heard it make a strange, thick cry, and right away another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the opening.
I turned and ran wildly towards the first group of trees, maybe a hundred yards away.
But I ran sideways and stumbled, because I couldn't take my eyes off these things.
There, among some young pine trees and bushes, I stopped, panting, and waited to see what would happen next.
The common around the sand-pits was dotted with people, standing like me in a half-fascinated terror, staring at these creatures.
Or rather, at the pile of gravel at the edge of the pit where they lay.
And then, with a new horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit.
It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in.
But it looked like a small black thing against the hot western sun.
Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and then he seemed to slip back until only his head was visible.
Suddenly he disappeared, and I thought I heard a faint scream.
I had a quick urge to go back and help him, but my fear was stronger.
Everything was then completely invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the pile of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made.
Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight.
A shrinking crowd of maybe a hundred people or more stood in a big, uneven circle.
They were in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges.
They said little to each other, and that in short, excited shouts.
And they stared, stared hard at a few piles of sand.
The ginger beer cart stood there, a strange, abandoned thing, black against the burning sky.
And in the sand-pits there was a row of empty vehicles, with their horses eating from nosebags or pawing the ground.