The War of the Worlds

von H. G. Wells

THE CYLINDER OPENS

When I returned to the common, the sun was setting. Groups of people were hurrying away from Woking, while a few stragglers made their way back. The crowd around the pit had grown, silhouetted against the lemon-yellow sky—perhaps a couple of hundred people. I could hear raised voices, and it seemed like a struggle was unfolding near the pit. A wave of strange thoughts washed over me as I approached, and then I heard Stent’s voice cutting through the noise.

“Keep back! Keep back!”

A boy dashed past me, breathless.

“It’s moving,” he shouted as he ran by. “It’s screwing and screwing out. I don’t like it. I’m going home!”

I pressed on toward the crowd. There were indeed two or three hundred people jostling for a better view, the few women among them surprisingly active in the chaos.

“He’s fallen into the pit!” someone yelled.

“Keep back!” several voices echoed.

The crowd swayed, and I pushed my way through, feeling the excitement in the air. From the pit, I heard a peculiar humming sound.

“I say!” Ogilvy called out. “Help keep these idiots back. We don’t know what’s in that thing!”

I spotted a young man, a shop assistant from Woking, trying to scramble out of the hole. The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cylinder was being unscrewed from within. Nearly two feet of gleaming screw protruded. Someone bumped into me, and I barely avoided being knocked onto the screw. As I turned, the lid of the cylinder fell to the gravel with a loud clang. I jabbed my elbow into the person behind me and turned my gaze back to the cylinder. For a moment, the circular opening appeared completely black, the sunset blinding me.

Everyone seemed to expect a man to emerge—perhaps something slightly different from us, but fundamentally human. I know I did. But as I looked, I noticed something stirring in the shadows: greyish, billowy movements, one atop another, and then two luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a thin grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled out from the writhing mass and wriggled toward me—followed by another.

A sudden chill washed over me. A woman behind me let out a piercing scream. I half-turned, keeping my eyes fixed on the cylinder, from which more tentacles were now emerging, and began to push my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment morph into horror on the faces around me. Inarticulate exclamations filled the air, and a general retreat began. I noticed the shop assistant still struggling at the edge of the pit. Suddenly, I found myself alone, watching as people on the other side of the pit ran away, Stent among them. I glanced back at the cylinder, and an overwhelming terror gripped me. I stood frozen, staring.

A large, rounded grey mass, about the size of a bear, was slowly and painfully rising from the cylinder. As it emerged and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Two large, dark eyes fixed on me intently. The mass that framed them—the creature’s head—was rounded and had what could be described as a face. Beneath the eyes was a mouth, lipless and quivering, dripping saliva. The entire creature heaved and pulsated. One tentacle gripped the edge of the cylinder while another swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a living Martian can hardly imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the lack of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of that mouth, the writhing tentacles, the tumultuous breathing in an alien atmosphere, the evident heaviness and difficulty of its movements due to Earth’s gravity—above all, the extraordinary intensity of those immense eyes—were all at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled, and monstrous. There was something fungal in the oily brown skin, something unspeakably repulsive in the clumsy deliberation of its movements. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overwhelmed with disgust and dread.

Suddenly, the creature vanished. It toppled over the edge of the cylinder and fell into the pit with a thud like a heavy mass of leather. I heard it emit a strange, thick cry, and almost immediately, another of these creatures appeared in the deep shadow of the opening.

I turned and ran, sprinting madly toward the nearest group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away. I stumbled and veered off course, unable to tear my gaze away from those things.

I paused among the young pine trees and thorny bushes, breathless, waiting for what would happen next. The common around the sand pits was filled with people, all of us caught in a mix of fascination and fear, staring at the strange creatures—or rather, at the pile of gravel at the edge of the pit where they lay.

Then, with a fresh wave of dread, I spotted a round, black shape bobbing up and down at the pit's edge. It was the head of the shopkeeper who had fallen in, a tiny silhouette against the blazing western sun. He managed to push his shoulder and knee up, but then he slipped back down, leaving only his head visible. Suddenly, he disappeared completely, and I thought I heard a faint scream. For a moment, I felt an urge to rush back and help him, but my fear held me back.

Everything became obscured, hidden by the deep pit and the mound of sand created by the fallen cylinder. Anyone passing by on the road from Chobham or Woking would have been astonished by the scene: a dwindling crowd of perhaps a hundred people or more, standing in a large, uneven circle. We were huddled in ditches, behind bushes, and peeking over gates and hedges, speaking little to each other, and when we did, it was only in short, excited shouts, all of us fixated on a few piles of sand.

Nearby, a cart of ginger beer stood abandoned, a dark silhouette against the scorching sky, while in the sand pits, a line of deserted vehicles sat idle, their horses munching from nosebags or pawing at the ground.