Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it.
At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances
of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never been out of
England before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a
foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that
the French and the Martians might prove very similar. She had been
growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two
days journeyings. Her great idea was to return to Stanmore. Things had
been always well and safe at Stanmore. They would find George at
Stanmore....
It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the
beach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the attention
of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a boat and
drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. The steamer was
going, these men said, to Ostend.
It was about two o clock when my brother, having paid their fares at
the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his
charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the
three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.
There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom
had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the captain
lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up
passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He
would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of
guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the
ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A jet
of smoke sprang out of her funnels.
Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from
Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. At the
same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three
ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of
black smoke. But my brother s attention speedily reverted to the
distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke rising
out of the distant grey haze.
96