Day 08 – Tuesday

The Martians continued to press their attack on London as the army’s Kingston and Richmond defences threaten to collapse under the impact of the black-smoke, and portions of the fleet mutiny.

In London, as the police go door-to-door encouraging everyone to evacuate, Toni and her fellow suffragists decide to stay to provide what help they can, even as law-and-order slowly breaks down around them.

Morant’s mother and her girls join him as he has decided to stay in London to fight for and protect refugees. To assist this glorious calling Morant decides to promote himself to Colonel and obtains additional supplies for what is becoming a growing militia based in the Underground’s newly completed Waterloo station.

At Tilbury Fort Lieutenant Dullanty manages to secure mounts and sufficient rations and ammunition to last his 2 platoons 5 days in the field, as well as several boxes of dynamite.

And now a 5th cylinder, like some brilliant green meteor, crashes to Earth near Bushey Park.

The slopes of Richmond Park and Kingston Hill are ablaze, the flames throwing their light upon a network of black smoke, which blots out the whole Valley of the Thames and extends as far as Wells can see.

It is now, for the first time, that he sights two Martians slowly wading through the smoke, turning their hissing steam-jets this way and that to clear the smoke.

In London, police begin to going door-to-door, waking people and warning them that “the Martians are coming!” In the background and the chaos the bells of every church in London make a jangling tumult.

Carriages and vehicles clog the roads as they head to Chalk Farm Station, where the North-Western special trains were loading up, instead of coming down the gradient into Euston.

In Wells’ word: “Its dawn now and as the black vapor pours through the streets of Richmond and the government begins to disintegrate – it, with one last expiring effort, rouses the population of London to the necessity of flight.”

Woken in the night by loud noises.

By 10AM co-ordination by the London police is beginning to lose coherency, guttering, softening, and running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body. @HGWells

Engine-drivers and stokers are now refusing to return to London, even as the pressure of the flight drives the people in an ever-thickening mass away from the stations and along the northward-running roads.

A Martian is sighted entering London, even as a thinning remnant of the black vapor has appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge.

London Pool appears a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision. Boats and barges are jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, their crew defending themselves against those who swarm upon them from the river front, or who clamber down the bridges piers from above.