Wells Escapes the House
Wells is drawn out of the house he had been imprisoned in Sheen by the sight of a dog fossicking around the Martian pit. Over the course of the day we follow his progress through Kew before he breaks into the inn at the top of Putney Hill to spend the night.
In London Morant is focussed on a tripod that had been found motionless in Lambeth.
Awake early today. So much to do at the #hospital. We have supplies for now, but after yesterday, I can see that the #NeedIsGreat.
@GraceHarwoodStewart and I took shifts last night caring for our #patients. #NeedNursesToHelp
#yawn #tired #fatigue #WantToGoBackToSleep
#Meeting with @NUWSS today again. That #line. There are other words I’d like to say, but #IAmAResponsibleWoman #MedicalStudent #WhereIsOurGovernment? #HidingInBirmingham
#Sadness – lost 2 #patients last night. @GraceHarwoodStewart and I have washed the bodies and prepared them for burial. @LizCabury says that #RedWeed is helpful as it covers our activities. #StJamesPark is across the road.
Perhaps now we can do something about the #stench under cover of the #RedWeed #Martians will not see us as long as we’re careful.
#MorningClinic opens again in half an hour. #IAmHelpingPeople #StillTired #fulfilled
Wells has lain close to the peep-hole, not daring to move aside the red plants that obscures it. Once or twice he has heard a faint pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going back and forth on the sand below, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that is all, but now …
… encouraged by the silence, Wells looks out through the hole to see, that except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hop and fight over the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, not a living thing in the pit.
All the machinery has gone. Save for the big mound of grayish-blue powder in one corner, some bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the skeletons of the killed, the place is merely an empty circular pit in the sand. Deserted!
Slowly Wells forces himself through the red weed, and stands upon the mound of rubble to see neither Martians nor sign of any Martians. He writes that: “At last, realising my chance of escape has come I begin to tremble.”
When Wells had last seen this part of Sheen it had been a straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed with shady trees. Now he stands on a mound of smashed brickwork, clay, and gravel, spread with red, knee-high cactus-shaped plants.
The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls stand, sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows and shattered doors. The red weed growing tumultuously in their roofless rooms.
Below Wells lies a great pit, where the crows struggle for its refuse. A number of other birds hop about among the ruins. Far away Wells sees a gaunt cat slink, along a wall, but traces of men there were none.
As Wells later writes: “the day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground swaying. And oh! the sweetness of the air!”
With his first need food, Wells discovers an enclosed garden where he finds some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which he secures, and continues on his way through scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew.
Lookouts report no movement of Martians overnight.
Marie, Vogan and two others are to take a barrel of gunpowder to the tripod in Lambeth
Farther on, in a grassy place, Wells finds a group of mushrooms, which he devours, before coming upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow water, where meadows used to be.
Wells settles to rest for the remainder of the day in a shrubbery, being too fatigued to push on. Since waking Wells has seen no other humans, and no signs of the Martians, though he encounters a couple of hungry-looking dogs.
No need for Gunpowder; the tripod at Lambeth had fallen, and dogs are tearing at the Martian’s corpse.
What’s left of the body is rotting flesh. Marie thinks that the Martians are susceptible to bacterial infections. If Brown was correct, they would stop coming because they can’t survive here.
Found an abandoned ale house and celebrate. This is good, but I tell Marie I would have preferred to blast their sorry hides with a heat gun. Marie refuses to work on the weapon from the fallen tripod but says that fifty arsenic rockets are ready.
One of my lookouts was a doctor by the name of Bernard Bloom. He claimed it was Almighty God that killed the Martians. He said that in our God’s infinite wisdom He used rotting animals to create a deadly miasma to smite the profane creatures. He chastised Marie for using arsenic, which would have, he said, protected the Martians from the divine retribution of the miasma. She had chosen her own way instead of God’s way.
I don’t want to repeat Marie’s response. I was lucky my French is bad. Bloom wasn’t so fortunate. I got Bloom to leave, but it was mainly for his protection. Marie had many staunch followers, and it could have got messy.
I’ve never seen Marie so angry, and she had directed anger at me in the past. Told her that everyone with an ounce of sense would be grateful for her work to rid us of Martians.
Marie suggests Vogan and I go to the Martian base in Primrose Hill to release their prisoners and ensure there are no Martian survivors.
#Meeting with @NUWSS very useful. @MilliFawcett has network up and running. Scouting parties head out at night, and food supplies have been located. #AllItTakesIsOrganisation #WeDemandTheVote #AbrogationOfResponsibility #FillingTheVoid
@MilliFawcett has located several #nurses who are relocating here. Some of our #oldies are preparing quarters for them, and have also volunteered to assist. #ThankHeavensForOldies #OldiesHavePurpose
It’s now clear that when #London was #evacuated, many people were left behind or #StayedToHelp. All they needed was #leadership #organisation and #direction. @NUWSS is #FillingTheVoid
#Nurses arrived this afternoon. Fabulous women. They’ve already organised themselves into a rotating shift pattern, so @GraceHarwoodStewart and I can sleep tonight. #SoTired #LoveNurses #TheyAreAmazing
@MarieRadiumCurie is here! #excited #SheCameToHelp #sadness #LostHerHusband #HeatRay #Martians @BreakerMorant brought her to us.
@BreakerMorant is a strange man. #IsHeForReal? #FullOfHimself #rebel #WhatsWithTheFeather
After sunset Wells struggles on along the road towards Putney, where he finds signs that the Heat-Ray had been used. And in a garden beyond Roehampton he finds a quantity of immature potatoes, sufficient to stay his hunger.
From this garden Wells looks down upon Putney and the river. To Wells the sight appears 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 this—silence.”
Filled with terror at how swiftly the desolating change had come, Wells is convinced (erroneously as we know) that the extermination of mankind was, save for such stragglers as he, had been completed in this part of the world and the Martians had left, seeking food elsewhere.
Wells spends the night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since his flight to Leatherhead and on a full stomach after finding two tins of pineapples and some biscuits.
He later writes that he dreams “that night of the curate, the Martians, and his wife, and wakes to find himself sitting in bed, staring at the dark. And for the first time since his return from Leatherhead he prays, steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God.”