Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, some
of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about. Three
or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles, and an
old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village
street. There were scores of people, most of them sufficiently
sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were having
the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of their
position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge box and a score
or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating with
the corporal who would leave them behind. I stopped and gripped his
arm.
Do you know what s over there? I said, pointing at the pine tops that
hid the Martians.
Eh? said he, turning. I was explainin these is vallyble.
Death! I shouted. Death is coming! Death! and leaving him to digest
that if he could, I hurried on after the artillery-man. At the corner I
looked back. The soldier had left him, and he was still standing by his
box, with the pots of orchids on the lid of it, and staring vaguely
over the trees.
No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were
established; the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen
in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing
miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh. The respectable inhabitants
of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed,
were packing, river-side loafers energetically helping, children
excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing
variation of their Sunday experiences. In the midst of it all the
worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebration, and his
bell was jangling out above the excitement.
I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking fountain,
made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. Patrols of
soldiers here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white were warning
people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the
firing began. We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing
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