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hopeless of escape. Through the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out
of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through grass from the advance of a man, or running
to and fro in utter dismay on the towing path.
Then suddenly the white flashes of the Heat-Ray came leaping towards me. The houses caved in as they
dissolved at its touch, and darted out flames; the trees changed to fire with a roar. The Ray flickered up and
down the towing path, licking off the people who ran this way and that, and came down to the water's edge
not fifty yards from where I stood. It swept across the river to Shepperton, and the water in its track rose in a
boiling weal crested with steam. I turned shoreward.
In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling-point had rushed upon me. I screamed aloud, and
scalded, half blinded, agonised, I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot
stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare
gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing but death.
I have a dim memory of the foot of a Martian coming down within a score of yards of my head, driving
straight into the loose gravel, whirling it this way and that and lifting again; of a long suspense, and then of
the four carrying the debris of their comrade between them, now clear and then presently faint through a veil
of smoke, receding interminably, as it seemed to me, across a vast space of river and meadow. And then, very
slowly, I realised that by a miracle I had escaped.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 44
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE
After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons, the Martians retreated to their original
position upon Horsell Common; and in their haste, and encumbered with the debris of their smashed
companion, they no doubt overlooked many such a stray and negligible victim as myself. Had they left their
comrade and pushed on forthwith, there was nothing at that time between them and London but batteries of
twelve-pounder guns, and they would certainly have reached the capital in advance of the tidings of their
approach; as sudden, dreadful, and destructive their advent would have been as the earthquake that destroyed
Lisbon a century ago.
But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its interplanetary flight; every twenty-four hours
brought them reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now fully alive to the
tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into
position until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston
and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area--perhaps
twenty square miles altogether--that encircled the Martian encampment on Horsell Common, through charred
and ruined villages among the green trees, through the blackened and smoking arcades that had been but a day
ago pine spinneys, crawled the devoted scouts with the heliographs that were presently to warn the gunners of
the Martian approach. But the Martians now understood our command of artillery and the danger of human
proximity, and not a man ventured within a mile of either cylinder, save at the price of his life.
It would seem that these giants spent the earlier part of the afternoon in going to and fro, transferring
everything from the second and third cylinders--the second in Addlestone Golf Links and the third at
Pyrford--to their original pit on Horsell Common. Over that, above the blackened heather and ruined buildings
that stretched far and wide, stood one as sentinel, while the rest abandoned their vast fighting-machines and
descended into the pit. They were hard at work there far into the night, and the towering pillar of dense green
smoke that rose therefrom could be seen from the hills about Merrow, and even, it is said, from Banstead and
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