I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present, and
had gone away to breakfast at Henderson s house.
There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the Pit, with their
feet dangling, and amusing themselves until I stopped them by throwing
stones at the giant mass. After I had spoken to them about it, they
began playing at touch in and out of the group of bystanders.
Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I employed
sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the butcher and his little
boy, and two or three loafers and golf caddies who were accustomed to
hang about the railway station. There was very little talking. Few of
the common people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical
ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at the big table
like end of the cylinder, which was still as Ogilvy and Henderson had
left it. I fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses
was disappointed at this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was
there, and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I
heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly ceased to
rotate.
It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of this
object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was really no
more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the
road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas float. It
required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the
grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white
metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an
unfamiliar hue. Extra-terrestrial had no meaning for most of the
onlookers.
At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come
from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it contained any
living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite
of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran
fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript, on the
difficulties in translation that might arise, whether we should find
coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for
assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it opened. About
eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such
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