BOOK ONE: THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 16: THE EXODUS FROM LONDON
(continued)
"Way! Way! The Martians are coming!"
Few stopped and came aside from that flood. The lane
opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening,
and had a delusive appearance of coming from the direction
of London. Yet a kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth;
weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for the most part
rested but a moment before plunging into it again. A little
way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay
a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. He
was a lucky man to have friends.
A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a
filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the
trap, removed his boot--his sock was blood-stained--shook
out a pebble, and hobbled on again; and then a little girl of
eight or nine, all alone, threw herself under the hedge close
by my brother, weeping.
"I can't go on! I can't go on!"
My brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted
her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone. So soon as my brother touched her she became quite
still, as if frightened.
"Ellen!" shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her
voice--"Ellen!" And the child suddenly darted away from
my brother, crying "Mother!"
"They are coming," said a man on horseback, riding past
along the lane.
"Out of the way, there!" bawled a coachman, towering
high; and my brother saw a closed carriage turning into the
lane.
The people crushed back on one another to avoid the
horse. My brother pushed the pony and chaise back into
the hedge, and the man drove by and stopped at the turn
of the way. It was a carriage, with a pole for a pair of horses,
but only one was in the traces. My brother saw dimly through
the dust that two men lifted out something on a white
stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet
hedge.
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