Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars,
some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about.
Three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles,
and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the
village street. There were scores of people, most of them
sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The
soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realise
the gravity of their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with
a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids,
angrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them behind.
I stopped and gripped his arm.

"Do you know what's over there?" I said, pointing at the pine tops
that hid the Martians.

"Eh?" said he, turning. "I was explainin' these is vallyble."

"Death!" I shouted. "Death is coming! Death!" and leaving him to
digest that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-man. At the
corner I looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still
standing by his box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and
staring vaguely over the trees.

No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were
established; the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen
in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing
miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants
of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily
dressed, were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping,
children excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this
astonishing variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst of it
all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration,
and his bell was jangling out above the excitement.

I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking
fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with
us. Patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in
white--were warning people to move now or to take refuge in their
cellars as soon as the firing began. We saw as we crossed the
railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and
about the railway station, and the swarming platform was piled with
boxes and packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe,
in order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and
I have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the
special trains that were put on at a later hour.

We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found
ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames
join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a
little cart. The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are
to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On the
Shepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of
Shepperton Church--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the
trees.

Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the
flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more
people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross.
People came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife
were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of
their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try
to get away from Shepperton station.

There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea
people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply
formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be
certainly destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would
glance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but
everything over there was still.

Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything
was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side. The people who
landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big
ferryboat had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on
the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without
offering to help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited
hours.

"What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!" said a man
near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from
the direction of Chertsey, a muffled thud--the sound of a gun.

The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries
across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up
the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed.
Everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet
invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows
feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows
motionless in the warm sunlight.

"The sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubtfully. A
haziness rose over the treetops.

Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff
of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the
ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing
two or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished.

"Here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "Yonder! D'yer
see them? Yonder!"


<< previous page | next page >>

Jump to page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 |