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"Hit!" shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer.
I heard answering shouts from the people in the water about me. I could have leaped out of the water with that
momentary exultation.
The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a
miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it
reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed
to the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to
destruction. It drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church,
smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on and
collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of my sight.
A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud, and shattered metal shot far up into the
sky. As the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. In another
moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend
upstream. I saw people struggling shorewards, and heard their screaming and shouting faintly above the
seething and roar of the Martian's collapse.
For a moment I heeded nothing of the heat, forgot the patent need of self-preservation. I splashed through the
tumultuous water, pushing aside a man in black to do so, until I could see round the bend. Half a dozen
deserted boats pitched aimlessly upon the confusion of the waves. The fallen Martian came into sight
downstream, lying across the river, and for the most part submerged.
Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could
see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud
and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck like living arms, and, save for the helpless
purposelessness of these movements, it was as if some wounded thing were struggling for its life amid the
waves. Enormous quantities of a ruddy-brown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine.
CHAPTER TWELVE 43
My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling, like that of the thing called a siren in our
manufacturing towns. A man, knee-deep near the towing path, shouted inaudibly to me and pointed. Looking
back, I saw the other Martians advancing with gigantic strides down the riverbank from the direction of
Chertsey. The Shepperton guns spoke this time unavailingly.
At that I ducked at once under water, and, holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered
painfully ahead under the surface as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me, and rapidly growing
hotter.
When for a moment I raised my head to take breath and throw the hair and water from my eyes, the steam was
rising in a whirling white fog that at first hid the Martians altogether. The noise was deafening. Then I saw
them dimly, colossal figures of grey, magnified by the mist. They had passed by me, and two were stooping
over the frothing, tumultuous ruins of their comrade.
The third and fourth stood beside him in the water, one perhaps two hundred yards from me, the other towards
Laleham. The generators of the Heat-Rays waved high, and the hissing beams smote down this way and that.
The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises--the clangorous din of the Martians,
the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring
of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went
to and fro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that gave place at once to
a smoky dance of lurid flames. The nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint and
pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]