still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had
precisely the same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary possession
of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the
stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St.
George's Hill and the woods of Painshill.

But facing that crescent everywhere--at Staines, Hounslow, Ditton,
Esher, Ockham, behind hills and woods south of the river, and across
the flat grass meadows to the north of it, wherever a cluster of trees
or village houses gave sufficient cover--the guns were waiting. The
signal rockets burst and rained their sparks through the night and
vanished, and the spirit of all those watching batteries rose to a
tense expectation. The Martians had but to advance into the line of
fire, and instantly those motionless black forms of men, those guns
glittering so darkly in the early night, would explode into a
thunderous fury of battle.

No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those
vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle--how
much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions
were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret
our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady
investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of
onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might
exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A
hundred such questions struggled together in my mind as I watched that
vast sentinel shape. And in the back of my mind was the sense of all
the huge unknown and hidden forces Londonward. Had they prepared
pitfalls? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare? Would
the Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of
their mighty province of houses?

Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and
peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of
a gun. Another nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside
us raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy
report that made the ground heave. The one towards Staines answered
him. There was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation.

I was so excited by these heavy minute-guns following one another
that I so far forgot my personal safety and my scalded hands as to
clamber up into the hedge and stare towards Sunbury. As I did so a
second report followed, and a big projectile hurtled overhead towards
Hounslow. I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such
evidence of its work. But all I saw was the deep blue sky above, with
one solitary star, and the white mist spreading wide and low beneath.
And there had been no crash, no answering explosion. The silence was
restored; the minute lengthened to three.

"What has happened?" said the curate, standing up beside me.

"Heaven knows!" said I.

A bat flickered by and vanished. A distant tumult of shouting
began and ceased. I looked again at the Martian, and saw he was now
moving eastward along the riverbank, with a swift, rolling motion.

Every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring
upon him; but the evening calm was unbroken. The figure of the Martian
grew smaller as he receded, and presently the mist and the gathering
night had swallowed him up. By a common impulse we clambered higher.
Towards Sunbury was a dark appearance, as though a conical hill had
suddenly come into being there, hiding our view of the farther
country; and then, remoter across the river, over Walton, we saw
another such summit. These hill-like forms grew lower and broader
even as we stared.

Moved by a sudden thought, I looked northward, and there I
perceived a third of these cloudy black kopjes had risen.

Everything had suddenly become very still. Far away to the
southeast, marking the quiet, we heard the Martians hooting to one
another, and then the air quivered again with the distant thud of
their guns. But the earthly artillery made no reply.

Now at the time we could not understand these things, but later I
was to learn the meaning of these ominous kopjes that gathered in the
twilight. Each of the Martians, standing in the great crescent I have
described, had discharged, by means of the gunlike tube he carried, a
huge canister over whatever hill, copse, cluster of houses, or other
possible cover for guns, chanced to be in front of him. Some fired
only one of these, some two--as in the case of the one we had seen;
the one at Ripley is said to have discharged no fewer than five at
that time. These canisters smashed on striking the ground--they did
not explode--and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy,
inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus
cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the
surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of
its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.

It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that,
after the first tumultuous uprush and outflow of its impact, it sank
down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather
liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the
valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the
carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And
where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the
surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank
slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and
it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one


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