Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ee de tae ee 440 N°? 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 horse- flesh. The respectable inhabitants of the place, men in golf and boating costumes, wives prettily dressed, were packing, riverside loafers energetically help- ing, children excited, and, for the most part, highly delighted at this astonishing variation of their Sun- day experiences. In the midst of it all the worthy vicar was very pluckily holding an early celebra- tion, and his bell was jangling out above the excite- ment. 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 grow- ing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway-station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. The ordinary traf- fic had been stopped, I believe, in order to allow the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and I have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on at a later hour. we. remained at Weybridge until mid-day, and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames oin. Part of the time we spent helping two old omen to pack a little cart. The Wey had a treble nouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and shere was a ferry across the river. On the Shep- yerton side was an inn, with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of Shepperton Church—it has been replaced by a spire—rose above the trees. Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. People came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get away from Shepperton Sta- tion. There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable hu- man beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would glance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but everything over there was still. Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side. The people who landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big ferry-boat had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without offering to help. The inn was closed, as EN was now within prohibited hours. ig i iat tae al NE Ee Rt MN a es AMAZING STORIES “What’s that!” cried a boatman, and “Shut up, you fool!” said a man near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from the di- rection of Chertsey, a muffled thud—the sound of a gun. The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right, un- seen because of the trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. Every one stood arrested by the sudden stir of bat- tle, near us and yet invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows feeding uncon- cernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard wil- lows motionless in the warm sunlight. “The sojers "Il stop ’em,” said a woman beside me doubtfully. A haziness rose over the tree-tops. Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air, and hung, and forthwith the ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished. “Here they are!” shouted a man in a blue jersey. “Yonder! D’yer see them? Yonder!” Quickly, one after the other, one, two, three, four of the armored Martians appeared, far away over the little trees, across the flat meadows that stretch towards Chertsey and striding hurriedly towards the river. Little crowded figures they seemed at first, going with a rolling motion and as fast as flying birds. Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armored bodies glittered in the sun, as they swept swiftly forward upon the guns, grow- ing rapidly larger as they drew nearer. One on the extreme left, the remotest, that is, flourished a huge case high in the air, and the ghostly terrible Heat- _ Ray I had already seen on Friday night smote to- wards Chertsey, and struck the town. At sight of these strange, swift, and terrible crea- tures, the crowd along by the water’s edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck. There was no screaming-or shouting, but a silence. Then a hoarse murmur and a movement of feet—a splash- ing from the water. A man, too frightened to drop the portmanteau he carried on his shoulder, swung round and sent me staggering with a blow from the corner of his burden. A woman thrust at me with her hand and rushed past me. I turned, too, with the rush of the people, but I was not too terri- fied for thought. The terrible Heat-Ray was in my mind. To get under water! That was it! “Get under water!” I shouted unheeded. I faced about again, and rushed towards the ap- proaching Martians—rushed right down the grav- elly beach and headlong into the water. Others did the same. A boatload of people putting back came leaping out as I rushed past. The stones under my feet were muddy and slippery, and the river was so low that I ran perhaps twenty feet scarcely waist- deep. Then as the Martian towered overhead, scarcely a couple of hundred yards away, I flung myself forward under the surface. The splashes of — the people in the boats leaping into the river sound- ed like thunderclaps in my ears. People were Jand- ing hastily on both sides of the river. But the Mera n mach CON icbeoksicomj, e