BOOK TWO: THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 1: UNDER FOOT
(continued)
We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards
Mortlake. Here there stood a white house within a walled
garden, and in the pantry of this domicile we found a store
of food--two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and
the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so precisely because,
as it happened, we were destined to subsist upon this store
for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and
there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces.
This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in
this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we
found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon,
and two tins of biscuits.
We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared
not strike a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer
out of the same bottle. The curate, who was still timorous
and restless, was now, oddly enough, for pushing on, and I
was urging him to keep up his strength by eating when the
thing happened that was to imprison us.
"It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding
glare of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped
out, clearly visible in green and black, and vanished again.
And then followed such a concussion as I have never heard
before or since. So close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash
and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the plaster of
the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude
of fragments upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across
the floor against the oven handle and stunned. I was insensible
for a long time, the curate told me, and when I came to we
were in darkness again, and he, with a face wet, as I found
afterwards, with blood from a cut forehead, was dabbing
water over me.
For some time I could not recollect what had happened.
Then things came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.
"Are you better?" asked the curate in a whisper.
At last I answered him. I sat up.
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