BOOK ONE: THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 14: IN LONDON
(continued)
In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy
roughs who had just been rushed out of Fleet Street with still-wet
newspapers and staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!"
they bawled one to the other down Wellington Street. "Fight
ing 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 realised something of
the full power and terror of these monsters. He learned that
they were not merely a handful of small sluggish creatures,
but that they were minds swaying vast mechanical bodies;
and that they could move swiftly and smite with such power
that even the mightiest guns could not stand against them.
They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly
a hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an express train,
and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had been planted in the country
about 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 happy chance,
had been destroyed. In the other cases the shells had missed,
and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone
of the despatch was optimistic.
The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in
the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were
pushing forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid
transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich--even
from the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninetyfive tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen
were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a vast 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 rapidly manufactured and distributed. No doubt, ran the report,
the situation was of the strangest and gravest description, but
the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No
doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme,
but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of
them against our millions.
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