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The war of the worlds H. G. Wells Public domain text from Project Gutenberg. / The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the World? . . . And how are all things made for man? KEPLER (quoted in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_) Contents BOOK ONE. THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS I. THE EVE OF THE WAR. II. THE FALLING STAR. III. ON HORSELL COMMON. IV. THE CYLINDER OPENS. V. THE HEAT-RAY. VI. THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD. VII. HOW I REACHED HOME. VIII. FRIDAY NIGHT. IX. THE FIGHTING BEGINS. X. IN THE STORM. XI. AT THE WINDOW. XII. WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON. 1 XIII. HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE. XIV. IN LONDON. XV. WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY. XVI. THE EXODUS FROM LONDON. XVII. THE THUNDER CHILD . BOOK TWO. THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS I. UNDER FOOT. II. WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE. III. THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT. IV. THE DEATH OF THE CURATE. V. THE STILLNESS. VI. THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS. VII. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL. VIII. DEAD LONDON. IX. WRECKAGE. X. THE EPILOGUE. BOOK ONE THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS I. THE EVE OF THE WAR. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire 2

The war of the worlds

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X. THE EPILOGUE. I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little I am able to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. In one respect I shall certainly provoke criticism. My particular province is speculative philosophy. My knowledge of comparative physiology is confined to a book or two, but it seems to me that Carver s suggestions as to the reason of the rapid death of the Martians is so probable as to be regarded almost as a proven conclusion. I have assumed that in the body of my narrative. At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species were found. That they did not bury any of their dead, and the reckless slaughter they perpetrated, point also to an entire ignorance of the putrefactive process. But probable as this seems, it is by no means a proven conclusion. Neither is the composition of the Black Smoke known, which the Martians used with such deadly effect, and the generator of the Heat-Rays remains a puzzle. The terrible disasters at the Ealing and South Kensington laboratories have disinclined analysts for further investigations upon the latter. Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood. But such unproven speculations will scarcely be of interest to the general reader, to whom this story is addressed. None of the brown scum that drifted down the Thames after the destruction of Shepperton was examined at the time, and now none is forthcoming. The results of an anatomical examination of the Martians, so far as the prowling dogs had left such an examination possible, I have already given. But everyone is familiar with the magnificent and almost complete specimen in spirits at the Natural History Museum, and the 157

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The war of the worlds