BOOK ONE: THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER 17: THE "THUNDER CHILD"
(continued)
He was also told that the Midland Railway Company had
replaced the desertions of the first day's panic, had resumed
traffic, and was running northward trains from St. Albans
to relieve the congestion of the home counties. There was
also a placard in Chipping Ongar announcing that large
stores of flour were available in the northern towns and that
within twenty-four hours bread would be distributed among
the starving people in the neighbourhood. But this intelligence did not deter him from the plan of escape he had
formed, and the three pressed eastward all day, and heard
no more of the bread distribution than this promise. Nor, as
a matter of fact, did anyone else hear more of it. That night
fell the seventh star, falling upon Primrose Hill. It fell while
Miss Elphinstone was watching, for she took that duty alternately with my brother. She saw it.
On Wednesday the three fugitives--they had passed the
night in a field of unripe wheat--reached Chelmsford, and
there a body of the inhabitants, calling itself the Committee
of Public Supply, seized the pony as provisions, and would
give nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share
in it the next day. Here there were rumours of Martians at
Epping, and news of the destruction of Waltham Abbey
Powder Mills in a vain attempt to blow up one of the invaders.
People were watching for Martians here from the church
towers. My brother, very luckily for him as it chanced, preferred to push on at once to the coast rather than wait for
food, although all three of them were very hungry. By midday they passed through Tillingham, which, strangely enough,
seemed to be quite silent and deserted, save for a few furtive
plunderers hunting for food. Near Tillingham they suddenly
came in sight of the sea, and the most amazing crowd of
shipping of all sorts that it is possible to imagine.
For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames,
they came on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton
and Clacton, and afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to
bring off the people. They lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve
that vanished into mist at last towards the Naze. Close inshore
was a multitude of fishing smacks--English, Scotch, French,
Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts,
electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a
multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships,
passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white
transport even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton
and Hamburg; and along the blue coast across the Blackwater
my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats
chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also
extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
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