August 16, 2025 • 16 mins
18 - War of the Worlds - Bk2, Ch1. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.
War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells) was published in 1898 at a time when he wrote a series of novels related to a number of historical events of the time. The most important of these was the unification and militarization of Germany. The story, written in a semi-documentary style, is told in the first person by an unnamed observer. It tells of the events which happen mostly in London and the county of Surrey, England, when a number of vessels manned by aliens are fired from Mars and land on Earth.
War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells) was published in 1898 at a time when he wrote a series of novels related to a number of historical events of the time. The most important of these was the unification and militarization of Germany. The story, written in a semi-documentary style, is told in the first person by an unnamed observer. It tells of the events which happen mostly in London and the county of Surrey, England, when a number of vessels manned by aliens are fired from Mars and land on Earth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. War of the World's by H. G. Wells,
Book two, The Earth under the Martians, Chapter one under Foot.
(00:30):
In the first book, I have wandered so much from
my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother,
that all through the last two chapters I and the
Curate have been lurking in the empty house at Halliford,
whither we fled to escape the black smoke. There I
will resume. We stop there or Sunday night, and all
the next day, the day of the panic, in our
(00:52):
little island of daylight, cut off by the black smoke
from the rest of the world, we could do nothing
but in aching inactivity. During these two weary days, my
mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured
her at Leatherhead, terrified in danger, mourning me already as
(01:15):
a dead man. I paced the rooms and cried aloud
when I thought of how I was cut off from her,
of all that might happen to her in my absence.
My cousin, I knew, was brave enough for any emergency,
but he was not the sort of man to realize
danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now was
(01:35):
not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe
that the Martians were moving London Wood and away from her.
Such vague anxieties kept the mind sensitive and painful. I
grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations.
I tired of the sight of his selfish despair. After
(01:59):
some ineffectual remonstrance, I kept away from him, staying in
a room, evidently a children's schoolroom, containing globes, forms and
copy books. When he followed me thither, I went to
a box room at the top of the house, and,
in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked
myself in. We were hopelessly hemmed in by the black
(02:22):
smoke all that day and the morning of the next.
There were signs of people in the next house on
Sunday evening, a face at a window and moving lights,
and later the slamming of a door. But I do
not know who these people were, nor what became of them.
We saw nothing of them. The next day. The black
(02:42):
smoke drifted slowly riverwood all through Monday morning, creeping nearer
and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway
outside the house that hid us. A martian came across
the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a jet
of superheated steam that hissed again the walls, smashed all
the windows it touched, and scolded the Curate's hand as
(03:04):
he fled out of the front room. When at last
we crept across the sodden rooms and looked out again,
the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had
passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were astonished
to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of
the scorch meadows. For a time we did not see
(03:25):
how this change affected our position, save that we were
relieved of our fear of the black smoke. But later
I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, and
that now we might get away. So soon as I
realized that the way of escape was open, my dream
of action returned. But the Curate was lethargic and unreasonable.
(03:46):
We are safe here, he repeated, Safe here. I resolved
to leave him. Would that I had wiser now from
the artilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and drink. I
had found oil and bags for my burns, and I
also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I
found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear
(04:06):
to him that I meant to go alone, had reconciled
myself to going alone, he suddenly roused himself to come,
And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started about
five o'clock, as I should judge, along the blackened road
to Sunbury. In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road
(04:27):
were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well
as men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with
black dust. That pall of sindery powder made me think
of what I had read of the destruction of POMPEII.
We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full
(04:48):
of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our
eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that
had escaped the suffocating drift. We went through Bushy Park
with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts,
and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton,
and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first
(05:10):
people we saw away across the road. The woods beyond
Ham and Petersham were still a fire. Twickenham was uninjured
by either heat ray or black smoke, and there were
more people about here, though none could give us news.
For the most part, they were, like ourselves, taking advantage
(05:30):
of a lull to shift their quarters. I have an
impression that many of the houses were still occupied by
scared inhabitants, too frightened even for flight. Here, too, the
evidence of a hasty route was abundant along the road.
I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap,
pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts.
(05:54):
We crossed Richmond Bridge about half past eight. We hurried
across the express bridge, of course, but I noticed floating
down the stream a number of red masses, some many
feet across. I did not know what these were. There
was no time for scrutiny, and I put a more
horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again, on
(06:17):
the Surrey side, were black dust that had once been smoke,
and dead bodies. A heap near the approach to the station,
but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we
were some way towards Barnes. We saw in the blackened
distance a group of three people running down a side
street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up
(06:39):
the hill, Richmond Town was burning briskly. Outside the town
of Richmond, there was no trace of the black smoke.
Then suddenly, as we approached Q, came a number of
people running, and the upper works of a Martian fighting
machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not one hundred
yards away from us. We stood again at our danger,
(07:01):
and had the Martian looked down, we must immediately have perished.
We were so terrified that we dared not go on,
but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden.
There the Curate crouched, weeping silently and refusing to stir again.
But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let
me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out again.
(07:24):
I went through a shrubbery and along a passage beside
a big house standing in its own grounds, and so
emerged upon the road towards Q. The Curate I left
in the shed, but he came hurrying after me. The
second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did,
for it was manifest the Martians were about us. No
(07:45):
sooner had the curate overtaken me than we saw either
the fighting machine we had seen before, or another far
away across the meadows in the direction of q Lodge.
Four or five little black figures hurried before it, across
the green gray of the feet, and in a moment
it was evident this martian pursued them. In three strides.
He was among them, and they ran, radiating from his
(08:09):
feet in all directions. He used no heat raid to
destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently
he tossed them into the great metallic carrier, which projected
behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder.
It was the first time I realized that the Martians
might have any other purpose than destruction. With defeated humanity,
(08:33):
we stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled
through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell
into rather than have found a fortunate ditch, and lay
there scarce, daring to whisper to each other until the
stars were out. I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock
before we gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing
(08:55):
into the road, but sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations,
and watching keenly through the darkness. He on the right
and I on the left for the Martians, who seemed
to be all about us. In one place, we blundered
upon a scorched and blackened area, now cooling and ashen,
and a number of scattered dead bodies of men, burned
(09:15):
horribly about the heads and trunks, but with their legs
and boots mostly intact, and of dead horses fifty feet
perhaps behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed
gun carriages. Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the
place was silent and deserted. Here we happened on no dead,
though the night was too dark for us to see
(09:37):
into the side roads of the place. In Sheen, my
companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided
to try one of the houses. The first house we entered,
after a little difficulty with the window, was a small
semi detached villa, and I found nothing eatable left in
the place, but some moldy cheese. There was, however, water
(09:58):
to drink, and I took a hatchet, which promised to
be useful in our next housebreaking. We then crossed to
a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there
stood a little white house within a walled garden, and
in the pantry of this domicile we found a store
of food, two loaves of bread in a pan, an
uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give
(10:22):
this catalog so precisely, because, as it happened, we were
destined to subsist on this store for the next fortnight.
Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two
bags of harryco beans and some limp lettuce. This pantry
opened into a kind of wash up kitchen, and in
this was firewood. There was also a cupboard, in which
(10:43):
we found nearly a dozen of burgundy tin soups and salmon,
and two tins of biscuits. We sat in the adjacent
kitchen in the dark, for we dared not strike a light,
and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of
the same bottle. The curate, who was still timorous and restless,
was now oddly enough for pushing on, and I was
(11:04):
urging him to keep up his strength by eating when
the thing happened that was to imprison us. It can't
be midnight yet, I said. And then came a blinding
glare of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leapt
out clearly, visibly in green and black, and vanished again.
And then followed such a concussion as I have never
(11:26):
heard before or since. So close on the heels of
this as to seem instantaneous, came a thud behind me,
a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling
masonry all about us, and the plaster of the ceiling
came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments
upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor
(11:47):
against the oven handle, and stunned. I was insensible for
a long time, the curate told me, And when I
came to, we were in darkness again, and he, with
a white face, as I found afterwards, with blood from
a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me. For some
time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things
(12:08):
came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.
Are you better, asked the Curate, in a whisper. At last,
I answered him. I sat up. Don't move, he said.
The floor is covered with smashed crockery from the dresser.
You can't possibly move without making a noise. And I
fancy they are outside. We both sat quite silent, so
(12:33):
that we could scarcely hear each other breathing. Everything seemed
deadly still, but once something near us, some plaster or
broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound. Outside and
very near was an intermittent metallic rattle, that said the curate.
(12:54):
When presently it happened again, Yes, I said, but what
is it? Hushan, said the Curate. I listened again. It
was not like the heat rate, I said. And for
a time I was inclined to think one of the
great fighting machines had stumbled against the house, as I
had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton Church.
(13:17):
Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three
or four hours until the dawn came, we scarcely moved.
And then the light filtered in, not through the window,
which remained black, but through a triangular aperture between a
beam and a heap of broken bricks in the wall
behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw
(13:37):
greyly for the first time. The window had been burst
in by a massive garden mold, which flowed over the
table upon which we had been sitting and lay about
our feet outside. The soil was banked high against the house.
At the top of the window frame we could see
an uprooted drain pipe. The floor was littered with smash hardware.
(14:01):
The end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into,
and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident
the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly
that this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in a
fashion pale green and with a number of copper and
tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles,
(14:23):
and a couple of colored supplements fluttering from the walls
above the kitchen range. As the dawn grew clearer, we
saw through the gap in the wall the body of
a martian standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing cylinder.
At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectully as possible,
(14:44):
out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness
of the scullery. Abruptly, the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.
The fifth cylinder, I whispered, the fifth shop from Mass
has struck this house and buried us under the ruins.
For the first time, the curate was silent, and then
(15:06):
he whispered, God have mercy upon us. I heard him
presently whimpering to himself. Save for that sound, we lay
quite still in the scullery. I, for my part, scarce
dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the
faint light of the kitchen door. I could just see
the curate's face a dim oval shape, and his collar
(15:30):
and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic hammering, then a
violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet interval, a hissing,
like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for the
most part, problematical, continued intermittently and seemed, if anything, to
increase in number as time wore on. Presently, a measured
(15:53):
thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver,
and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift began
and continued. Once the light was eclipsed, and the ghostly
kitchen doorway became absolutely dark. For many hours, we must
have crouched there, silent and shivering, until our tired attention failed.
(16:15):
At last, I found myself awake and very hungry. I
am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater
portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger was
at a stride, so insistent that it moved me to action.
I told the curate I was going to seek food,
and felt my way towards the pantry. He made me
(16:36):
no answer, But so soon as I began eating, the
faint noise I made stirred him up, and I heard
him crawling after me. End of Chapter one
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. War of the World's by H. G. Wells,
Book two, The Earth under the Martians, Chapter one under Foot.
(00:30):
In the first book, I have wandered so much from
my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother,
that all through the last two chapters I and the
Curate have been lurking in the empty house at Halliford,
whither we fled to escape the black smoke. There I
will resume. We stop there or Sunday night, and all
the next day, the day of the panic, in our
(00:52):
little island of daylight, cut off by the black smoke
from the rest of the world, we could do nothing
but in aching inactivity. During these two weary days, my
mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured
her at Leatherhead, terrified in danger, mourning me already as
(01:15):
a dead man. I paced the rooms and cried aloud
when I thought of how I was cut off from her,
of all that might happen to her in my absence.
My cousin, I knew, was brave enough for any emergency,
but he was not the sort of man to realize
danger quickly, to rise promptly. What was needed now was
(01:35):
not bravery, but circumspection. My only consolation was to believe
that the Martians were moving London Wood and away from her.
Such vague anxieties kept the mind sensitive and painful. I
grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations.
I tired of the sight of his selfish despair. After
(01:59):
some ineffectual remonstrance, I kept away from him, staying in
a room, evidently a children's schoolroom, containing globes, forms and
copy books. When he followed me thither, I went to
a box room at the top of the house, and,
in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked
myself in. We were hopelessly hemmed in by the black
(02:22):
smoke all that day and the morning of the next.
There were signs of people in the next house on
Sunday evening, a face at a window and moving lights,
and later the slamming of a door. But I do
not know who these people were, nor what became of them.
We saw nothing of them. The next day. The black
(02:42):
smoke drifted slowly riverwood all through Monday morning, creeping nearer
and nearer to us, driving at last along the roadway
outside the house that hid us. A martian came across
the fields about midday, laying the stuff with a jet
of superheated steam that hissed again the walls, smashed all
the windows it touched, and scolded the Curate's hand as
(03:04):
he fled out of the front room. When at last
we crept across the sodden rooms and looked out again,
the country northward was as though a black snowstorm had
passed over it. Looking towards the river, we were astonished
to see an unaccountable redness mingling with the black of
the scorch meadows. For a time we did not see
(03:25):
how this change affected our position, save that we were
relieved of our fear of the black smoke. But later
I perceived that we were no longer hemmed in, and
that now we might get away. So soon as I
realized that the way of escape was open, my dream
of action returned. But the Curate was lethargic and unreasonable.
(03:46):
We are safe here, he repeated, Safe here. I resolved
to leave him. Would that I had wiser now from
the artilleryman's teaching, I sought out food and drink. I
had found oil and bags for my burns, and I
also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I
found in one of the bedrooms. When it was clear
(04:06):
to him that I meant to go alone, had reconciled
myself to going alone, he suddenly roused himself to come,
And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started about
five o'clock, as I should judge, along the blackened road
to Sunbury. In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road
(04:27):
were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well
as men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with
black dust. That pall of sindery powder made me think
of what I had read of the destruction of POMPEII.
We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full
(04:48):
of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our
eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that
had escaped the suffocating drift. We went through Bushy Park
with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts,
and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton,
and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first
(05:10):
people we saw away across the road. The woods beyond
Ham and Petersham were still a fire. Twickenham was uninjured
by either heat ray or black smoke, and there were
more people about here, though none could give us news.
For the most part, they were, like ourselves, taking advantage
(05:30):
of a lull to shift their quarters. I have an
impression that many of the houses were still occupied by
scared inhabitants, too frightened even for flight. Here, too, the
evidence of a hasty route was abundant along the road.
I remember most vividly three smashed bicycles in a heap,
pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts.
(05:54):
We crossed Richmond Bridge about half past eight. We hurried
across the express bridge, of course, but I noticed floating
down the stream a number of red masses, some many
feet across. I did not know what these were. There
was no time for scrutiny, and I put a more
horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again, on
(06:17):
the Surrey side, were black dust that had once been smoke,
and dead bodies. A heap near the approach to the station,
but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we
were some way towards Barnes. We saw in the blackened
distance a group of three people running down a side
street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up
(06:39):
the hill, Richmond Town was burning briskly. Outside the town
of Richmond, there was no trace of the black smoke.
Then suddenly, as we approached Q, came a number of
people running, and the upper works of a Martian fighting
machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not one hundred
yards away from us. We stood again at our danger,
(07:01):
and had the Martian looked down, we must immediately have perished.
We were so terrified that we dared not go on,
but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden.
There the Curate crouched, weeping silently and refusing to stir again.
But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let
me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out again.
(07:24):
I went through a shrubbery and along a passage beside
a big house standing in its own grounds, and so
emerged upon the road towards Q. The Curate I left
in the shed, but he came hurrying after me. The
second start was the most foolhardy thing I ever did,
for it was manifest the Martians were about us. No
(07:45):
sooner had the curate overtaken me than we saw either
the fighting machine we had seen before, or another far
away across the meadows in the direction of q Lodge.
Four or five little black figures hurried before it, across
the green gray of the feet, and in a moment
it was evident this martian pursued them. In three strides.
He was among them, and they ran, radiating from his
(08:09):
feet in all directions. He used no heat raid to
destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently
he tossed them into the great metallic carrier, which projected
behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder.
It was the first time I realized that the Martians
might have any other purpose than destruction. With defeated humanity,
(08:33):
we stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled
through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell
into rather than have found a fortunate ditch, and lay
there scarce, daring to whisper to each other until the
stars were out. I suppose it was nearly eleven o'clock
before we gathered courage to start again, no longer venturing
(08:55):
into the road, but sneaking along hedgerows and through plantations,
and watching keenly through the darkness. He on the right
and I on the left for the Martians, who seemed
to be all about us. In one place, we blundered
upon a scorched and blackened area, now cooling and ashen,
and a number of scattered dead bodies of men, burned
(09:15):
horribly about the heads and trunks, but with their legs
and boots mostly intact, and of dead horses fifty feet
perhaps behind a line of four ripped guns and smashed
gun carriages. Sheen, it seemed, had escaped destruction, but the
place was silent and deserted. Here we happened on no dead,
though the night was too dark for us to see
(09:37):
into the side roads of the place. In Sheen, my
companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided
to try one of the houses. The first house we entered,
after a little difficulty with the window, was a small
semi detached villa, and I found nothing eatable left in
the place, but some moldy cheese. There was, however, water
(09:58):
to drink, and I took a hatchet, which promised to
be useful in our next housebreaking. We then crossed to
a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there
stood a little white house within a walled garden, and
in the pantry of this domicile we found a store
of food, two loaves of bread in a pan, an
uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give
(10:22):
this catalog so precisely, because, as it happened, we were
destined to subsist on this store for the next fortnight.
Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two
bags of harryco beans and some limp lettuce. This pantry
opened into a kind of wash up kitchen, and in
this was firewood. There was also a cupboard, in which
(10:43):
we found nearly a dozen of burgundy tin soups and salmon,
and two tins of biscuits. We sat in the adjacent
kitchen in the dark, for we dared not strike a light,
and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of
the same bottle. The curate, who was still timorous and restless,
was now oddly enough for pushing on, and I was
(11:04):
urging him to keep up his strength by eating when
the thing happened that was to imprison us. It can't
be midnight yet, I said. And then came a blinding
glare of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leapt
out clearly, visibly in green and black, and vanished again.
And then followed such a concussion as I have never
(11:26):
heard before or since. So close on the heels of
this as to seem instantaneous, came a thud behind me,
a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling
masonry all about us, and the plaster of the ceiling
came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments
upon our heads. I was knocked headlong across the floor
(11:47):
against the oven handle, and stunned. I was insensible for
a long time, the curate told me, And when I
came to, we were in darkness again, and he, with
a white face, as I found afterwards, with blood from
a cut forehead, was dabbing water over me. For some
time I could not recollect what had happened. Then things
(12:08):
came to me slowly. A bruise on my temple asserted itself.
Are you better, asked the Curate, in a whisper. At last,
I answered him. I sat up. Don't move, he said.
The floor is covered with smashed crockery from the dresser.
You can't possibly move without making a noise. And I
fancy they are outside. We both sat quite silent, so
(12:33):
that we could scarcely hear each other breathing. Everything seemed
deadly still, but once something near us, some plaster or
broken brickwork, slid down with a rumbling sound. Outside and
very near was an intermittent metallic rattle, that said the curate.
(12:54):
When presently it happened again, Yes, I said, but what
is it? Hushan, said the Curate. I listened again. It
was not like the heat rate, I said. And for
a time I was inclined to think one of the
great fighting machines had stumbled against the house, as I
had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton Church.
(13:17):
Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three
or four hours until the dawn came, we scarcely moved.
And then the light filtered in, not through the window,
which remained black, but through a triangular aperture between a
beam and a heap of broken bricks in the wall
behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw
(13:37):
greyly for the first time. The window had been burst
in by a massive garden mold, which flowed over the
table upon which we had been sitting and lay about
our feet outside. The soil was banked high against the house.
At the top of the window frame we could see
an uprooted drain pipe. The floor was littered with smash hardware.
(14:01):
The end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into,
and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident
the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly
that this ruin was the neat dresser, stained in a
fashion pale green and with a number of copper and
tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating blue and white tiles,
(14:23):
and a couple of colored supplements fluttering from the walls
above the kitchen range. As the dawn grew clearer, we
saw through the gap in the wall the body of
a martian standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing cylinder.
At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectully as possible,
(14:44):
out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness
of the scullery. Abruptly, the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.
The fifth cylinder, I whispered, the fifth shop from Mass
has struck this house and buried us under the ruins.
For the first time, the curate was silent, and then
(15:06):
he whispered, God have mercy upon us. I heard him
presently whimpering to himself. Save for that sound, we lay
quite still in the scullery. I, for my part, scarce
dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the
faint light of the kitchen door. I could just see
the curate's face a dim oval shape, and his collar
(15:30):
and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic hammering, then a
violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet interval, a hissing,
like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for the
most part, problematical, continued intermittently and seemed, if anything, to
increase in number as time wore on. Presently, a measured
(15:53):
thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver,
and the vessels in the pantry ring and shift began
and continued. Once the light was eclipsed, and the ghostly
kitchen doorway became absolutely dark. For many hours, we must
have crouched there, silent and shivering, until our tired attention failed.
(16:15):
At last, I found myself awake and very hungry. I
am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater
portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger was
at a stride, so insistent that it moved me to action.
I told the curate I was going to seek food,
and felt my way towards the pantry. He made me
(16:36):
no answer, But so soon as I began eating, the
faint noise I made stirred him up, and I heard
him crawling after me. End of Chapter one
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