CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE EXODUS FROM LONDON


So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the
greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning--the stream of
flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round
the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the
shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel
northward and eastward. By ten o'clock the police organisation, and
by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency,
losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in
that swift liquefaction of the social body.

All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern
people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and
trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for
standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock. By three, people
were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple
of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were
fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct
the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the
people they were called out to protect.

And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused
to return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an
ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the
northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes,
and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and
across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges
in its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and
surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but
unable to escape.

After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at
Chalk Farm--the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods
yard there _ploughed_ through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men
fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his
furnace--my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across
through a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost
in the sack of a cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was
punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off,
notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep
foot of Haverstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned
horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.

So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware
Road, reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead
of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway,
curious, wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some
horsemen, and two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of the
wheel broke, and the machine became unridable. He left it by the
roadside and trudged through the village. There were shops half
opened in the main street of the place, and people crowded on the
pavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this
extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning. He
succeeded in getting some food at an inn.

For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The
flying people increased in number. Many of them, like my brother,
seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh news of
the invaders from Mars.

At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested.
Most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there
were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and
the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.

It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where
some friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike
into a quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a stile,
and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. He passed near
several farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not
learn. He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High
Barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers.
He came upon them just in time to save them.

He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a
couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in
which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the
frightened pony's head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in
white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure,
slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her
disengaged hand.

My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried
towards the struggle. One of the men desisted and turned towards him,
and my brother, realising from his antagonist's face that a fight was
unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and
sent him down against the wheel of the chaise.

It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him
quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the
slender lady's arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung
across his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and
the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in


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