BOOK ONE: THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 14: IN LONDON
(continued)
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
regulating the traffic. Some of the refugees were exchanging
news with the people on the omnibuses. One was professing
to have seen the Martians. "Boilers on stilts, I tell you,
striding along like men." Most of them were excited and
animated by their strange experience.
Beyond Victoria the public-houses were doing a lively trade
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
drew on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like
Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My brother addressed
several of these fugitives 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 entirely
destroyed on the previous night.
"I come from Byfleet," he said; "man on a bicycle came
through the place in the early morning, and ran from door to
door warning us to come away. Then came soldiers. We went
out to look, and there were clouds of smoke to the south--nothing
but smoke, and not a soul coming that way. Then
we heard the guns at Chertsey, and folks coming from Weybridge. So I've locked up my house and come on."
At the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the
authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of
the invaders without all this inconvenience.
About eight o'clock a noise of heavy firing was distinctly
audible all over the south of London. My brother could not
hear it for the traffic in the main thoroughfares, but by striking through the quiet back streets to the river he was able to
distinguish it quite plainly.
He walked from Westminster to his apartments near Regent's Park, about two. He was now very anxious on my
account, and disturbed at the evident magnitude 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, expectant guns, of the suddenly nomadic countryside;
he tried to imagine "boilers on stilts" a hundred feet high.
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