The War of the Worlds / Война миров. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I was a little depressed at first with the contagion of my wife’s fears, but very soon my thoughts reverted to the Martians. At that time I was absolutely in the dark[65] as to the course of the evening’s fighting. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there with masses of black and red smoke.

Ripley Street was deserted, and except for a lighted window or so the village showed not a sign of life; but I narrowly escaped an accident at the corner of the road to Pyrford, where a knot of people stood with their backs to me. They said nothing to me as I passed. I do not know what they knew of the things happening beyond the hill, nor do I know if the silent houses I passed on my way were sleeping securely, or deserted and empty, or harassed and watching against the terror of the night.

From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the Wey, and the red glare was hidden from me. As I ascended the little hill beyond Pyrford Church the glare came into view again, and the trees about me shivered with the first intimation of the storm that was upon me. Then I heard midnight pealing out from Pyrford Church behind me, and then came the silhouette of Maybury Hill, with its tree-tops and roofs black and sharp against the red.

Even as I beheld this a lurid green glare lit the road about me and showed the distant woods towards Addlestone. I felt a tug at the reins. I saw that the driving clouds had been pierced as it were by a thread of green fire, suddenly lighting their confusion and falling into the field to my left. It was the third falling star!

Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth[66] and bolted.

A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we clattered. Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen. The thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations. The flickering light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as I drove down the slope.

At first I regarded little but the road before me[67], and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision – a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine-trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright.

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pin-trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

Then suddenly the trees in the pine wood ahead of me were parted, as brittle reeds are parted by a man thrusting through them; they were snapped off and driven headlong, and a second huge tripod appeared, rushing, as it seemed, headlong towards me. And I was galloping hard to meet it[68]! At the sight of the second monster my nerve went altogether[69]. Not stopping to look again, I wrenched the horse’s head hard round to the right and in another moment the dog-cart had heeled over upon the horse; the shafts smashed noisily, and I was flung sideways and fell heavily into a shallow pool of water.

I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog-cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.

Seen nearer[70], the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine-tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.

As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder – “Aloo! Aloo!” – and in another minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from Mars.

For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge tops. A thin hail was now beginning, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. Now and then[71] came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up.

I was soaked with hail above and puddle water below. It was some time before my blank astonishment would let me struggle up the bank to a drier position, or think at all of my imminent peril.

Not far from me was a little one-roomed squatter’s hut of wood, surrounded by a patch of potato garden. I struggled to my feet at last, and, crouching and making use of every chance of cover[72], I made a run for this. I hammered at the door, but I could not make the people hear (if there were any people inside), and after a time I desisted, and, availing myself of a ditch for the greater part of the way, succeeded in crawling, unobserved by these monstrous machines, into the pine woods towards Maybury.

Under cover of this I pushed on, wet and shivering now, towards my own house. I walked among the trees trying to find the footpath. It was very dark indeed in the wood, for the lightning was now becoming infrequent, and the hail, which was pouring down in a torrent, fell in columns through the gaps in the heavy foliage.

If I had fully realized the meaning of all the things I had seen I should have immediately worked my way round through Byfleet to Street Cobham, and so gone back to rejoin my wife at Leatherhead. But that night the strangeness of things about me, and my physical wretchedness, prevented me, for I was bruised, weary, wet to the skin, deafened and blinded by the storm.

I had a vague idea[73] of going on to my own house, and that was as much motive as I had. I staggered through the trees, fell into a ditch and bruised my knees against a plank, and finally splashed out into the lane that ran down from the College Arms. I say splashed, for the storm water was sweeping the sand down the hill in a muddy torrent. There in the darkness a man blundered into me and sent me reeling back.

He gave a cry of terror, sprang sideways, and rushed on before I could gather my wits sufficiently to speak to him. So heavy was the stress of the storm just at this place that I had the hardest task to win my way up the hill. I went close up to the fence on the left and worked my way along its palings.

Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of lightning, saw between my feet a heap of black broadcloth and a pair of boots. Before I could distinguish clearly how the man lay, the flicker of light had passed. I stood over him waiting for the next flash. When it came, I saw that he was a sturdy man, cheaply but not shabbily dressed; his head was bent under his body, and he lay crumpled up close to the fence, as though he had been flung violently against it.

Overcoming the repugnance natural to one who had never before touched a dead body, I stooped and turned him over to feel for his heart. He was quite dead. Apparently his neck had been broken. The lightning flashed for a third time, and his face leaped upon me. I sprang to my feet. It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose conveyance I had taken.

I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill. I made my way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house. Nothing was burning on the hillside, though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail. So far as I could see[74] by the flashes, the houses about me were mostly uninjured. By the College Arms a dark heap lay in the road.

Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet, but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them. I let myself in with my latchkey, closed, locked and bolted the door, staggered to the foot of the staircase, and sat down. My imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters, and of the dead body smashed against the fence.

I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall, shivering violently.

Chapter Eleven

At the Window

I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that I was cold and wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I got up almost mechanically, went into the dining-room and drank some whiskey, and then I was moved to change my clothes.

After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so I do not know[75]. The window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this window had been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway.

The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine-trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across the light huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro.

It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire – a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the clear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of burning was in the air.

I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along the Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. The light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part smashed and on fire[76], the hinder carriages still upon the rails.

Between these three main centres of light – the houses, the train, and the burning county towards Chobham – stretched irregular patches of dark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set with fire. It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries at night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I peered intently for them. Later I saw against the light of Woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across the line.

And this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos! What had happened in the last seven hours I still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to guess, the relation between these mechanical colossi[77] and the sluggish lumps I had seen disgorged from the cylinder. With a queer feeling of impersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, and stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three gigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare about the sand pits.

They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be. Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing I felt was impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man’s brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.

The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west, when a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the fence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I looked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings. At the sight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the window eagerly.

“Hist![78]” said I, in a whisper.

He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came over and across the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent down and stepped softly.

“Who’s there?” he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“God knows.[79]”

“Are you trying to hide?”

“That’s it.”

“Come into the house,” I said.

I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door again. I could not see his face. He was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned.

“My God!” he said, as I drew him in.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“What hasn’t?” In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of despair. “They wiped us out – simply wiped us out,” he repeated again and again.

He followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining-room.

“Take some whiskey,” I said, pouring out a stiff dose[80].

He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair, stood beside him, wondering.

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Примечания

1

Kepler – Иоганн Кеплер (1571–1630), немецкий астроном, один из творцов астрономии нового времени, открыл законы движения планет, заложил основы теории затмений, изобрел телескоп, в котором объектив и окуляр – двояковыпуклые линзы

2

a present-day problem – (зд.) животрепещущие (насущные) проблемы

3

dodo – дронт, вымершая в XVII–XVIII вв. птица

4

Tasmanians – тасманийцы, коренное население острова Тасмания, в XIX в. истреблены английскими колонизаторами

5

Schiaparelli – Джованни Вирджинио Скиапарелли (1835–1910), итальянский астроном, в 1877 г. обнаружил на Марсе сеть тонких линий, так называемых каналов

6

to take a turn with him – (зд.) вместе понаблюдать

7

started on its way to the earth – (разг.) начал свое движение к земле

8

here, there, and everywhere – (разг.) повсеместно

9

could go about their petty concerns – (разг.) могут заниматься такими пустяками

10

For my own part – (разг.) Что же касается меня

11

French windows – застекленные от пола до потолка двери, как правило, выходящие в сад

12

unequal cooling off its surface – (зд.) неравномерное остывание поверхности

13

brought his heart into his mouth – (разг.) напугал его до смерти

14

a lunatic at large – (разг.) сбежавший из лечебницы псих

15

was deaf in one ear – (разг.) был туговат на одно ухо

16

meeting with no response – (устар.) не дождавшись ответа

17

with their feet dangling – (разг.) болтая ногами

18

had roused every observatory – (зд.) взбудоражила все обсерватории

19

the lord of the manor – (устар.) хозяин имения (земли)

20

it afforded no grip to them – (разг.) не за что было ухватиться

21

I say! – (разг.) Послушайте!

22

A sudden chill came over me. – (разг.) Внезапно меня пробрала дрожь.

23

Gorgon – в греческой мифологии крылатые женщины-чудовища со змеями вместо волос

24

made for the first group of trees – (зд.) бросился к ближайшим зарослям

25

waited further developments – (разг.) стал ждать дальнейшего развития событий

26

I was a battleground of fear and curiosity. – (разг.) Я разрывался между страхом и любопытством.

27

ugly brutes – (разг.) жуткие уроды

28

as the dusk came on – (разг.) с наступлением сумерек

29

arrested by these phenomena – (разг.) застывших в изумлении от происходящего

30

fell headlong – (разг.) упал плашмя

31

spared me – (разг.) я остался невредим

32

save for that – (разг.) за исключением этого

33

did not dare to look back – (разг.) боялся оглянуться назад

34

one of whom was mounted – (разг.) один из них верхом

35

horse-play – (разг.) грубые шутки, развлечения

36

had a far narrower escape – (разг.) чудом избежали смерти

37

in order to clear their way – (разг.) чтобы расчистить путь (пробиться на дорогу)

38

I was immediately the self of every day again – (разг.) как-то внезапно очнулся (стал самим собой)

39

could not credit it – (зд.) не был в этом уверен; не мог сказать с уверенностью (подтвердить)

40

I am a man of exceptional moods – (зд.) у меня бывают странные ощущения

41

Don’t – (зд.) Ну-ну, не надо об этом

42

In particular I laid stress – (разг.) В частности, я особо отметил (уделил внимание, сделал акцент)

43

at a pinch – (разг.) в случае необходимости; в крайнем случае

44

if the worst comes to the worst – (разг.) в худшем случае

45

will peck them to death – (разг.) заклюем их до смерти

46

whose emotions or habits were at all affected – (разг.) чей образ жизни или эмоциональное состояние изменились

47

People rattling Londonwards – (разг.) Пассажиры поездов на Лондон

48

now and again – (разг.) временами; время от времени

49

dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes – (зд.) плохо различимые предметы непонятных очертаний и назначения

50

for immemorial years – (разг.) от сотворения мира

51

were certainly alive to the seriousness of the business – (разг.) безусловно, осознавали серьезность положения

52

for a time – (разг.) немного; какое-то время

53

we might learn a thing or two – (разг.) мы могли бы чему-нибудь у них научиться

54

This lot’ll cost the insurance people a pretty penny – (разг.) Все это влетит в копеечку страховым компаниям

55

who had authorised the movements of the troops – (зд.) кто отдал приказ войскам выступить на позицию

56

that’s my tip – (разг.) вот мой совет; вот что я вам скажу

57

Fresh attempts have been made to signal – (зд.) С ними снова пытались войти в контакт

58

against the first body – (зд.) против первой группы (первого десанта)

59

Close on the heels of that – (разг.) Сразу после этого

60

We can’t possibly stay here – (разг.) Нам здесь нельзя оставаться

61

were setting fire to everything within range – (разг.) поджигали все, до чего могли дотянуться (своим лучом); куда доставал их луч

62

commended my wife to their care – (устар.) поручил свою жену их заботам

63

at the utmost – (разг.) в крайнем случае

64

Would that I had! – (воскл.) Как жаль, что я этого не сделал! (Если бы я ее послушал!)

65

was absolutely in the dark – (разг.) абсолютно ничего не знал

66