July 14, 2025 • 8 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six, The Work of fifteen Days. For some time
I stood tottering on the mound, regardless of my safety.
Within that noisome den from which I had emerged. I
had thought, with a narrow intensity, only of our immediate security.
I had not realized what had been happening to the world.
(00:23):
Had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I
had expected to see sheen in ruins. I found about
me the landscape, weird and lurid of another planet. For
that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range
of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate
(00:45):
know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel,
returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work
of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house.
I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently
grew quite clear in my mind that oppressed me for
many days. A sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I
(01:08):
was no longer a master, but an animal among the
animals under the Martian heel. With us, it would be
as with them to lurk and watch, to run and hide,
the fear and Empire of Man had passed away. But
so soon as this strangeness had been realized, it passed,
(01:29):
and my dominant motive became the hunger of my long
and dismal fast. In the direction away from the pit,
I saw beyond a red covered wall a patch of
garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I
went knee deep and sometimes neck deep in the red weed.
(01:49):
The density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense
of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and
when I attempted to clamber it, I found I could
not live to my feet to the crest. So I
went along by the side of it and came to
a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get
to the top and tumble into the garden I coveted.
(02:12):
Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs,
and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and,
scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through
scarlet and crimson trees towards que. It was like walking
through an avenue of gigantic blood drops. Possessed with two
(02:34):
ideas to get more food and to limp as soon
and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed,
unearthly region of the pit. Some way farther, in a
grassy place, was a group of mushrooms, which also I devoured.
And then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing
(02:54):
shallow water where meadows used to be. These fragments of
nourishment so served only to wet my hunger. At first
I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer,
but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the
tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly, this extraordinary growth
(03:15):
encountered water. Its straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled for cunderity.
Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of
the Way and Thames, and its swiftly growing and titanic
water fronds speedily choked both those rivers. At Putney, as
I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a
(03:37):
tangle of this weed, and at Richmond too, the Thames
water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the
meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the water spread, the
weed followed them until the ruined villas of the Thames
Valley were for a time lost in this red swamp,
whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the
(04:00):
martians had caused was concealed. In the end, the red
weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread, a
cankering disease, due, it is believed to the action of
certain bacteria presently seized upon it. Now, by the action
of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting
(04:21):
power against bacterial diseases. They never succumb without a severe struggle.
But the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.
The fronds became bleached and then shriveled and brittle. They
broke off at the least touch, and the waters that
had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out
(04:42):
to sea. My first act on coming to this water was,
of course, to slake my thirst. I drank a great
deal of it, and, moved by an impulse, gnawed some
fronds of red weed, but they were watery and had
a sickly metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently
(05:04):
shallow for me to wadhe securely, although the red weed
impeded my feet a little, but the flood evidently got
deeper towards the river, and I turned back to Mortlake.
I managed to make out the road by means of
occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and
so presently I got out of this spade and made
(05:25):
my way to the hill, going up towards Roehampton, and
came out on Putney Common. Here the scenery changed from
the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar.
Patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and
in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly
undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed,
(05:50):
as if they had been left for a day by
the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. The
red weed was less abundant. The tall trees along the
lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted for
food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided
a couple of silent houses, but they had already been
(06:10):
broken into and ransacked. I rested for the remainder of
the daylight in a shrubbery, being in my enfeebled condition
too fatigued to push on. All this time I saw
no human beings and no signs of the Martians. I
encountered a couple of hungry looking dogs, but both hurried
(06:32):
circatuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton,
I had seen two human skeletons, not bodies, but skeletons
picked clean. And in the woods by me I found
the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits,
and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed
parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to
(06:54):
be got from them. After sunset I struggled on along
the road towards Putney, where I think the heat ray
must have been used for some reason, And in the
garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes
sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked
down upon Putney and the river. The aspect of the
(07:16):
place in the dusk was singularly desolate, blackened trees, blackened,
desolate ruins, and down the hill the sheets of the
flooded river red tinged with the weed and over all silence.
It filled me with indescribable terror to think how swiftly,
that desolating change had come. For a time, I believed
(07:41):
that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that
I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard
by the top of Putney Hill, I came upon another
skeleton with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from
the rest of the body. As I proceeded, I became
more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was
(08:04):
save for such stragglers as myself already accomplished in this
part of the world. The martians, I thought, had gone
on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps
even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it
might be they had gone northward. End of Section twenty three.
Chapter six, The Work of fifteen Days. For some time
I stood tottering on the mound, regardless of my safety.
Within that noisome den from which I had emerged. I
had thought, with a narrow intensity, only of our immediate security.
I had not realized what had been happening to the world.
(00:23):
Had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I
had expected to see sheen in ruins. I found about
me the landscape, weird and lurid of another planet. For
that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range
of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate
(00:45):
know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel,
returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work
of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house.
I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently
grew quite clear in my mind that oppressed me for
many days. A sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I
(01:08):
was no longer a master, but an animal among the
animals under the Martian heel. With us, it would be
as with them to lurk and watch, to run and hide,
the fear and Empire of Man had passed away. But
so soon as this strangeness had been realized, it passed,
(01:29):
and my dominant motive became the hunger of my long
and dismal fast. In the direction away from the pit,
I saw beyond a red covered wall a patch of
garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I
went knee deep and sometimes neck deep in the red weed.
(01:49):
The density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense
of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and
when I attempted to clamber it, I found I could
not live to my feet to the crest. So I
went along by the side of it and came to
a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get
to the top and tumble into the garden I coveted.
(02:12):
Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs,
and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and,
scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through
scarlet and crimson trees towards que. It was like walking
through an avenue of gigantic blood drops. Possessed with two
(02:34):
ideas to get more food and to limp as soon
and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed,
unearthly region of the pit. Some way farther, in a
grassy place, was a group of mushrooms, which also I devoured.
And then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing
(02:54):
shallow water where meadows used to be. These fragments of
nourishment so served only to wet my hunger. At first
I was surprised at this flood in a hot, dry summer,
but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the
tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly, this extraordinary growth
(03:15):
encountered water. Its straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled for cunderity.
Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of
the Way and Thames, and its swiftly growing and titanic
water fronds speedily choked both those rivers. At Putney, as
I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a
(03:37):
tangle of this weed, and at Richmond too, the Thames
water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the
meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the water spread, the
weed followed them until the ruined villas of the Thames
Valley were for a time lost in this red swamp,
whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the
(04:00):
martians had caused was concealed. In the end, the red
weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread, a
cankering disease, due, it is believed to the action of
certain bacteria presently seized upon it. Now, by the action
of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting
(04:21):
power against bacterial diseases. They never succumb without a severe struggle.
But the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.
The fronds became bleached and then shriveled and brittle. They
broke off at the least touch, and the waters that
had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out
(04:42):
to sea. My first act on coming to this water was,
of course, to slake my thirst. I drank a great
deal of it, and, moved by an impulse, gnawed some
fronds of red weed, but they were watery and had
a sickly metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently
(05:04):
shallow for me to wadhe securely, although the red weed
impeded my feet a little, but the flood evidently got
deeper towards the river, and I turned back to Mortlake.
I managed to make out the road by means of
occasional ruins of its villas and fences and lamps, and
so presently I got out of this spade and made
(05:25):
my way to the hill, going up towards Roehampton, and
came out on Putney Common. Here the scenery changed from
the strange and unfamiliar to the wreckage of the familiar.
Patches of ground exhibited the devastation of a cyclone, and
in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly
undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors closed,
(05:50):
as if they had been left for a day by
the owners, or as if their inhabitants slept within. The
red weed was less abundant. The tall trees along the
lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted for
food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided
a couple of silent houses, but they had already been
(06:10):
broken into and ransacked. I rested for the remainder of
the daylight in a shrubbery, being in my enfeebled condition
too fatigued to push on. All this time I saw
no human beings and no signs of the Martians. I
encountered a couple of hungry looking dogs, but both hurried
(06:32):
circatuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton,
I had seen two human skeletons, not bodies, but skeletons
picked clean. And in the woods by me I found
the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits,
and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed
parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to
(06:54):
be got from them. After sunset I struggled on along
the road towards Putney, where I think the heat ray
must have been used for some reason, And in the
garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes
sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked
down upon Putney and the river. The aspect of the
(07:16):
place in the dusk was singularly desolate, blackened trees, blackened,
desolate ruins, and down the hill the sheets of the
flooded river red tinged with the weed and over all silence.
It filled me with indescribable terror to think how swiftly,
that desolating change had come. For a time, I believed
(07:41):
that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that
I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard
by the top of Putney Hill, I came upon another
skeleton with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from
the rest of the body. As I proceeded, I became
more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was
(08:04):
save for such stragglers as myself already accomplished in this
part of the world. The martians, I thought, had gone
on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps
even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it
might be they had gone northward. End of Section twenty three.
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