The train service was now very much disorganised. Quite a number of
people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western
network were standing about the station. One grey-headed old gentleman
came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my brother. It
wants showing up, he said.
One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston,
containing people who had gone out for a day s boating and found the
locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and
white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.
There s hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and
things, with boxes of valuables and all that, he said. They come from
Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there s been guns heard
at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to
get off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing
at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder. What the
dickens does it all mean? The Martians can t get out of their pit, can
they?
My brother could not tell him.
Afterwards he found that the vague feeling of alarm had spread to the
clients of the underground railway, and that the Sunday excursionists
began to return from all over the South-Western lung Barnes,
Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth at unnaturally early hours;
but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of.
Everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered.
About five o clock the gathering crowd in the station was immensely
excited by the opening of the line of communication, which is almost
invariably closed, between the South-Eastern and the South-Western
stations, and the passage of carriage trucks bearing huge guns and
carriages crammed with soldiers. These were the guns that were brought
up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an exchange
of pleasantries: You ll get eaten! We re the beast-tamers! and so
forth. A little while after that a squad of police came into the
station and began to clear the public off the platforms, and my brother
went out into the street again.
66