It was while the curate had sat and talked so wildly to me under the hedge in the flat meadows near Halliford, and while my brother was watching the fugitives1 stream over Westminster Bridge, that the Martians had resumed the offensive. So far as one can ascertain2 from the conflicting accounts that have been put forth3, the majority of them remained busied with preparations in the Horsell pit until nine that night, hurrying on some operation that disengaged huge volumes of green smoke.
But three certainly came out about eight o'clock and, advancing slowly and cautiously, made their way through Byfleet and Pyrford towards Ripley and Weybridge, and so came in sight of the expectant batteries against the setting sun. These Martians did not advance in a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow. They communicated with one another by means of sirenlike howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another.
It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. George's Hill that we had heard at Upper Halliford. The Ripley gunners, unseasoned artillery4 volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a position, fired one wild, premature5, ineffectual volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted6 village, while the Martian, without using his Heat-Ray, walked serenely7 over their guns, stepped gingerly among them, passed in front of them, and so came unexpectedly upon the guns in Painshill Park, which he destroyed.
The St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a better mettle8. Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their guns as deliberately9 as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a thousand yards' range.
The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic10 haste. The overthrown11 Martian set up a prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground, and, simultaneously12, both his companions brought their HeatRays to bear on the battery. The ammunition13 blew up, the pine trees all about the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were already running over the crest14 of the hill escaped.
After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts15 who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary16 for the next half hour. The Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood17, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck18 of blight19, and apparently20 engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees again.
It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick black tube. A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between St. George's Hill, Weybridge, and the village of Send, southwest of Ripley.
A dozen rockets sprang out of the hills before them so soon as they began to move, and warned the waiting batteries about Ditton and Esher. At the same time four of their fighting machines, similarly armed with tubes, crossed the river, and two of them, black against the western sky, came into sight of myself and the curate as we hurried wearily and painfully along the road that runs northward21 out of Halliford. They moved, as it seemed to us, upon a cloud, for a milky22 mist covered the fields and rose to a third of their height.
At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began running; but I knew it was no good running from a Martian, and I turned aside and crawled through dewy nettles23 and brambles into the broad ditch by the side of the road. He looked back, saw what I was doing, and turned to join me.
The two halted, the nearer to us standing24 and facing Sunbury, the remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away towards Staines.
The occasional howling of the Martians had ceased; they took up their positions in the huge crescent about their cylinders25 in absolute silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. Never since the devising of gunpowder27 was the beginning of a battle so still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely28 the same effect--the Martians seemed in solitary29 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 vigilant30 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 spurts31 of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity32 of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might exterminate33 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 pitfalls34? Were the powder mills at Hounslow ready as a snare35? Would the Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of their mighty36 province of houses?
Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching37 and peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion38 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 detonation39.
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 projectile40 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 lengthened41 to three.
"What has happened?" said the curate, standing up beside me.
"Heaven knows!" said I.
A bat flickered42 by and vanished. A distant tumult43 of shouting began and ceased. I looked again at the Martian, and saw he was now moving eastward44 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 receded45, and presently the mist and the gathering46 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 hooting47 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 ominous48 kopjes that gathered in the twilight49. 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 gaseous50 hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling51 of its pungent52 wisps, was death to all that breathes.
It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest53 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 volcanic54 clefts55 is wont56 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 could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The vapour did not diffuse57 as a true gas would do. It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly58 down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of the air, and sank to the earth in the form of dust. Save that an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue of the spectrum59 is concerned, we are still entirely60 ignorant of the nature of this substance.
Once the tumultuous upheaval61 of its dispersion was over, the black smoke clung so closely to the ground, even before its precipitation, that fifty feet up in the air, on the roofs and upper stories of high houses and on great trees, there was a chance of escaping its poison altogether, as was proved even that night at Street Cobham and Ditton.
The man who escaped at the former place tells a wonderful story of the strangeness of its coiling flow, and how he looked down from the church spire62 and saw the houses of the village pising like ghosts out of its inky nothingness. For a day and a half he remained there, weary, starving and sun-scorched, the earth under the blue sky and against the prospect63 of the distant hills a velvet-black expanse, with red roofs, green trees, and, later, black-veiled shrubs64 and gates, barns, outhouses, and walls, rising here and there into the sunlight.
But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to remain until it sank of its own accord into the ground. As a rule the Martians, when it had served its purpose, cleared the air of it again by wading65 into it and directing a jet of steam upon it.
This they did with the vapour banks near us, as we saw in the starlight from the window of a deserted house at Upper Halliford, whither we had returned. From there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill going to and fro, and about eleven the windows rattled66, and we heard the sound of the huge siege guns that had been put in position there. These continued intermittently67 for the space of a quarter of an hour, sending chance shots at the invisible Martians at Hampton and Ditton, and then the pale beams of the electric light vanished, and were replaced by a bright red glow.
Then the fourth cylinder26 fell--a brilliant green meteor--as I learned afterwards, in Bushey Park. Before the guns on the Richmond and Kingston line of hills began, there was a fitful cannonade far away in the southwest, due, I believe, to guns being fired haphazard68 before the black vapour could overwhelm the gunners.
So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps69' nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling70 vapour over the Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. All night through their destructive tubes advanced. Never once, after the Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give the artillery the ghost of a chance against them. Wherever there was a possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly displayed the Heat-Ray was brought to bear.
By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and the glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black smoke, blotting71 out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as far as the eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly waded72, and turned their hissing73 steam jets this way and that.
They were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they had but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the opposition74 they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quickfirers up the Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic.
One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. Survivors75 there were none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert and watchful76, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the limber gunners with their horses and waggons77, the groups of civilian78 spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance79 of the shots the Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields.
One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist80 of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking81, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing82 on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque83 cone84 of smoke. And then night and extinction-nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.
Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of Richmond, and the disintegrating85 organism of government was, with a last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight.
收听单词发音 |
1
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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mettle
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| n.勇气，精神 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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scouts
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| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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nettles
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| n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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cylinders
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| n.圆筒( cylinder的名词复数 )；圆柱；汽缸；（尤指用作容器的）圆筒状物 | |
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cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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vigilant
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| adj.警觉的，警戒的，警惕的 | |
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spurts
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| 短暂而突然的活动或努力( spurt的名词复数 )； 突然奋起 | |
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unanimity
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| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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exterminate
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| v.扑灭，消灭，根绝 | |
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pitfalls
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| （捕猎野兽用的）陷阱( pitfall的名词复数 )； 意想不到的困难，易犯的错误 | |
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snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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detonation
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| n.爆炸；巨响 | |
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projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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lengthened
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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47
hooting
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| （使）作汽笛声响，作汽车喇叭声( hoot的现在分词 )； 倒好儿； 倒彩 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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51
inhaling
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| v.吸入( inhale的现在分词 ) | |
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52
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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53
densest
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| 密集的( dense的最高级 )； 密度大的； 愚笨的； （信息量大得）难理解的 | |
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54
volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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clefts
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| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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57
diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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sluggishly
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| adv.懒惰地；缓慢地 | |
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spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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61
upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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64
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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wading
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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wasps
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| 黄蜂( wasp的名词复数 )； 胡蜂； 易动怒的人； 刻毒的人 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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71
blotting
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| 吸墨水纸 | |
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72
waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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77
waggons
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| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
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civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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resonance
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| n.洪亮；共鸣；共振 | |
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80
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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81
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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82
writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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83
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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85
disintegrating
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的现在分词 ) | |
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