The Greatest Science Fiction Novels & Stories by H. G. Wells. Герберт Уэллс

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      CHAPTER NINE

       The Fighting Begins

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      Saturday lives in my memory as a day of suspense. It was a day of lassitude too, hot and close, with, I am told, a rapidly fluctuating barometer. I had slept but little, though my wife had succeeded in sleeping, and I rose early. I went into my garden before breakfast and stood listening, but towards the common there was nothing stirring but a lark.

      The milkman came as usual. I heard the rattle of his chariot and I went round to the side gate to ask the latest news. He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by troops, and that guns were expected. Then — a familiar, reassuring note — I heard a train running towards Woking.

      “They aren’t to be killed,” said the milkman, “if that can possibly be avoided.”

      I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day.

      “It’s a pity they make themselves so unapproachable,” he said. “It would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might learn a thing or two.”

      He came up to the fence and extended a handful of strawberries, for his gardening was as generous as it was enthusiastic. At the same time he told me of the burning of the pine woods about the Byfleet Golf Links.

      “They say,” said he, “that there’s another of those blessed things fallen there — number two. But one’s enough, surely. This lot’ll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything’s settled.” He laughed with an air of the greatest good humour as he said this. The woods, he said, were still burning, and pointed out a haze of smoke to me. “They will be hot under foot for days, on account of the thick soil of pine needles and turf,” he said, and then grew serious over “poor Ogilvy.”

      After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway bridge I found a group of soldiers — sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal, and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the Cardigan men standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. They said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the troops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards. The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the HeatRay to them, and they began to argue among themselves.

      “Crawl up under cover and rush ‘em, say I,” said one.

      “Get aht!,” said another. “What’s cover against this ‘ere ‘eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground’ll let us, and then drive a trench.”

      “Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha” been born a rabbit Snippy.”

      “‘Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third, abruptly-a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.

      I repeated my description.

      “Octopuses,” said he, “that’s what I calls ‘em. Talk about fishers of men — fighters of fish it is this time!”

      “It ain’t no murder killing beasts like that,” said the first speaker.

      “Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish ‘em?” said the little dark man. “You carn tell what they might do.”

      “Where’s your shells?” said the first speaker. “There ain’t no time. Do it in a rush, that’s my tip, and do it at once.”

      So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.

      But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were in the hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed didn’t know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the tobacconist, that his son was among the dead on the common. The soldiers had made the people on the outskirts of Horsell lock up and leave their houses.

      I got back to lunch about two, very tired for, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers СКАЧАТЬ