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The War of the Worlds

262 illustrations · 27 chapters

Chapter 1Watched from Mars, unaware

  1. Old, cold Mars turns its lit face toward a tiny blue-green Earth across the gulf of space
  2. From dying Mars, a small green Earth shines in the dusk sky like a warm morning star
  3. Mars fires its first shot.
  4. At midnight, in a dark timber observatory, the narrator bends over the brass eyepiece.
  5. Through the eyepiece, Mars sits small, silvery and still in a circle of deep blue
  6. Alone in the black observatory, the narrator bends to the eyepiece beneath a starry slit
  7. Through the eyepiece, a tiny reddish spark breaks out on the rim of the silvery planet
  8. Walking home, Ogilvy dismisses anything manlike on Mars as a million-to-one chance

Chapter 2The cylinder found on the common

  1. A still June night over the sleeping suburb of Maybury Hill.
  2. On the night of the first falling star, the narrator sits writing by lamplight in his study.
  3. At dawn on Horsell Common, Ogilvy strides alone toward a huge ring of flung sand
  4. At dawn on Horsell Common, Ogilvy stands alone on the lip of the fresh crater.
  5. A close view of the cylinder's crusted rim at dawn.
  6. Ogilvy's eyes go wide: something inside the cylinder is unscrewing its top
  7. Alone on the crater floor at dawn, Ogilvy realises someone is trapped inside the scorching cylinder.
  8. A close look at the rim of the Martian cylinder on Horsell Common.
  9. Henderson raises a stick to the crusted cylinder as Ogilvy bends close and listens
  10. Ogilvy is out of breath and stops in the sunlit Woking street, pointing after Henderson.
  11. At a quarter to nine, the narrator hurries down a sunlit lane with the Daily Chronicle

Chapter 3The crowd at the Pit

  1. A high view across Horsell Common on a still June morning.
  2. Alone in the pit by the cylinder, the narrator stops and tilts his head toward the sand
  3. A thin seam of yellowish-white metal gleams between the rusty cylinder's lid and body
  4. Half the district streams up the sandy road on Horsell Common toward the sand-pits
  5. By the sand-pits, a visitor opens an evening paper with huge headlines about Mars
  6. The crimson-faced Astronomer Royal stands on the half-buried cylinder, directing the dig
  7. Atop the half-buried cylinder, the Astronomer Royal stabs a finger at the workmen below
  8. On the crater floor, the narrator leans his ear against the thick crusted end of the cylinder.

Chapter 4The cylinder opens and the Martians appear

  1. On Horsell Common at sunset, a crowd rings the sand-pit while more hurry up the road
  2. On the sandy road at sunset, a frightened village boy runs past the narrator.
  3. With the lid off, the narrator looks over the crater lip into a black circular opening
  4. A thin grey tentacle coils up from the cylinder and reaches for the narrator
  5. A grey, bear-sized mass hauls itself out of the cylinder, glistening like wet leather
  6. The first Martian rises from the cylinder and fixes two immense dark eyes on the onlooker
  7. An extreme close-up of the narrator's face as he locks eyes with the first Martian.
  8. As the first Martian drops into the pit, a second rises in the cylinder's black mouth
  9. The shop assistant claws over the sand-heap against the low sun as the narrator watches
  10. From the Chobham road, a broken ring of onlookers crouches, staring at low heaps of sand

Chapter 5The Heat-Ray strikes the Deputation

  1. Thin black whips lash up from behind the sand-heaps across the swollen setting sun
  2. On the heath at sunset, the narrator's neighbour flings a hand toward the sand-heaps
  3. From the knoll, the narrator watches the Deputation carry a white flag toward the pit
  4. At dusk, three puffs of luminous green smoke rise one after another from the Horsell pit
  5. At dusk the Deputation stops dead before the pit on Horsell Common, white flag raised.
  6. At deep dusk on Horsell Common, the small Deputation stands frozen under its white flag.
  7. The narrator stands frozen on the knot of heath as the invisible Heat-Ray sweeps towards him.
  8. The unseen Heat-Ray burns a curving, smoking scar through the heather beside the narrator
  9. The Heat-Ray has passed.
  10. On the darkened common, the Heat-Ray's panic breaks the narrator.
  11. The narrator's tear-streaked face fills the frame as he runs through the dark heath.

Chapter 6The Heat-Ray and the Crowd's Flight

  1. Night after the massacre on Horsell Common.
  2. On a June evening, young Woking shop people walk arm in arm along a lane to the common
  3. At dusk on the Horsell road, a row of onlookers stands frozen in profile.
  4. A chain of furze bushes bursts into flame one by one, racing toward the watching crowd
  5. The Heat-Ray passes just over the heads of the crowd at the corner of Horsell Common.
  6. A mounted policeman gallops through the crowd, hands clasped over his head, screaming
  7. In the black cutting on the way back to Woking, the panicked crowd crushes its own weakest.

Chapter 7Flight home and a false calm

  1. Horsell Common lies empty and on fire under a June night sky, seen from high above.
  2. The narrator flees alone across Horsell Common at night.
  3. The narrator runs in blind panic through the burning night on Horsell Common.
  4. The narrator sits up on the roadside verge by the gasworks, hatless, his collar burst loose.
  5. The dazed narrator on the canal bridge watches a firelit train fly over the Maybury arch
  6. At a gaslit Oriental Terrace gate, a woman and two men laugh at the narrator's Mars news
  7. Bareheaded, dusty and haggard, the narrator sways on his own lamplit doorstep
  8. The narrator's wife goes deadly white with fear, believing his story, and he breaks off
  9. The narrator looks across the lamplit dinner table at his wife.
  10. The narrator and his wife dine in a small rose-coloured pool of lamplight

Chapter 8Friday night: the world goes on

  1. From above, Woking's lamp-lit roofs and a glowing train surround black Horsell Common
  2. By lamplight, the narrator draws a five-mile circle round the sand-pits on an old map
  3. In a London newspaper office, an editor spikes Henderson's telegram as a hoax
  4. Woking junction lies quiet in gaslight as villas burn far off toward Horsell
  5. Horsell Common lies silent under the stars on Friday night.
  6. A lone man crawls through the dark heather of Horsell Common toward the Martian pit.
  7. Friday night on Horsell Common, seen from high on the pine knoll.
  8. About eleven on Friday night, red-coated soldiers string out along Horsell Common's edge
  9. On the Chertsey road after midnight, the crowd watches a green star fall into the pines
  10. A faint green glow and thin smoke rise from the pine woods where the second cylinder fell

Chapter 9The Day of Waiting and the Flight from Maybury Hill

  1. Seen from above, Maybury Hill lies drowsy in the hot haze of a Saturday dawn
  2. The neighbour leans on the garden fence and laughs about the insurance bill
  3. On a hot, dull Saturday morning the narrator walks down to the railway bridge.
  4. On his lawn, the narrator stops dead as the Oriental College trees burst into red flame
  5. Struck by the Heat-Ray, the narrator's chimney bursts and bricks clatter down the tiles
  6. The narrator grabs his wife's arm and pulls her through the side gate into the sandy lane.
  7. The narrator's terrified wife watches hussars ride under the railway bridge
  8. Two women wait in the dog cart outside the house and stare at the burning beeches below
  9. A dismounted hussar runs past the narrator's gate, shouting news of the Martian machine
  10. The fleeing dog cart passes wheat fields as the crest behind it pours smoke and fire

Chapter 10Night drive into the storm

  1. A still golden June evening on the white road to Leatherhead.
  2. On the road to Leatherhead, the narrator's wife sits silent and very white beside him
  3. In a lamplit Leatherhead doorway, the narrator's pale wife watches him drive off
  4. Beyond Ockham, a lone dog cart drives along a black road toward a blood-red glow
  5. Beyond Pyrford, a thread of green fire plunges into the field beside the dog cart
  6. A lightning flash reveals the first Martian fighting-machine over the Maybury Hill heath
  7. The bolting horse carries the dog cart toward a second tripod bursting from the pines
  8. The narrator panics at the sight of the second tripod and wrenches the horse round.
  9. Lightning shows a Martian tripod striding across the road, a young pine in one tentacle
  10. Lightning shows the dead landlord of the Spotted Dog, whose cart the narrator wrecked
  11. Soaked and shaking, the narrator sits curled at the foot of his dark staircase

Chapter 11At the window: the artilleryman's tale

  1. The narrator stops short on the threshold of his pitch-dark study.
  2. From his study window, the narrator sees three black tripods moving on the burning common
  3. The narrator leans from his dark study window as a hatless soldier climbs the palings
  4. In the unlit dining room, the artilleryman sobs at the table with his head on his arms
  5. The driver's horse steps in a rabbit hole and throws him as the Martian shield rises
  6. The Artilleryman lies pinned under a dead horse and watches from ground level.
  7. The Martian fighting-machine stands on the burnt heath with its back to the hidden artilleryman.
  8. The artilleryman crouches among the smoking ruins of Woking.
  9. At first light, the narrator and the artilleryman look out over a valley turned to ash

Chapter 12Weybridge and Shepperton destroyed

  1. At dawn, the soot-smudged narrator grips the newel post and stares at the front door
  2. Through a field gate near Byfleet, the narrator sees six field guns aimed at the pines
  3. The narrator and the artilleryman reach the crowded ferry beach where Wey meets Thames
  4. At the Shepperton ferry, a man in a blue jersey points across the sunny Chertsey meadows.
  5. Glittering fighting-machines stride across the meadows towards the guns
  6. Waist-deep at Shepperton, the narrator dives for the water as a Martian strides behind him
  7. At Shepperton a shell bursts in the fighting-machine's hood and the head flies apart
  8. The headless fighting-machine reels across the Thames into the tower of Shepperton Church
  9. The Heat-Ray cuts across the Thames in a ridge of steam just ahead of the narrator
  10. Scalded and half blind, the narrator lies collapsed on the bare gravel spit
  11. A Martian's huge metal foot slams into the gravel spit a score of yards from the narrator
  12. The narrator watches four Martian machines carry their fallen comrade upstream

Chapter 13Meeting the curate on the Walton bank

  1. Four fighting-machines carry their dead comrade's wreckage back across Horsell Common
  2. One fighting-machine keeps watch at the pit rim above the blackened heather of Horsell Common
  3. Seen from the Thames, Halliford's deserted riverside houses burn, smoke rising straight up
  4. The narrator wakes in the long grass by the Walton hedge to find a stranger beside him
  5. At sunset on the Walton bank, the curate rises in a frenzy and points at burning Weybridge
  6. The curate raises his thin hands to the reddening sky and cries that the end has come
  7. The scalded narrator grips the shaken curate's shoulder: God is not an insurance agent
  8. On the Walton bank at sunset, the curate stares at nothing with wide pale eyes
  9. The narrator and the curate stand listening to distant guns and a strange far-off crying
  10. At dusk the scalded narrator turns north and beckons the curate, still facing Weybridge

Chapter 14London: from calm to panic

  1. On a hazy Saturday morning, London seen from high above the Thames goes about its usual business.
  2. At Waterloo the crowd cheers as huge field guns and carriages of soldiers roll past
  3. Loafers on Waterloo Bridge lean over the balustrade to stare at brown scum on the Thames
  4. At dusk on the Strand, the narrator's brother stands frozen with the pink special edition
  5. At dusk the wet pink special edition sweeps out of Wellington Street into the Strand.
  6. At dusk in Trafalgar Square, a young man stops to watch the first haggard refugees
  7. Before dawn, from the brother's attic, windows light up across the grey roofs of London
  8. At dawn the brother's hands crush the pink paper with the Commander-in-Chief's dispatch
  9. At dawn on the door-step, the brother reads the dispatch's last line over the newspaper
  10. At pink dawn a Marylebone terrace street tilts uphill toward Chalk Farm.
  11. With ten pounds in his pocket, the brother comes down the lodging-house steps at dawn

Chapter 15The Black Smoke Crushes the Artillery

  1. The quiet Thames country of villages, meadows and pine hills lies under a red June sunset
  2. On St. George's Hill the Heat-Rays hit the battery; ammunition blows up and pines burn
  3. Two exhausted fugitives hurry north along the empty road out of Halliford.
  4. Two fugitives crouch in a nettle ditch as a Martian lifts its black tube to the sky
  5. Two fugitives cling high in a roadside hawthorn hedge north of Halliford at dusk.
  6. The narrator and the curate watch the fourth cylinder streak down like a green meteor
  7. At midnight black smoke covers the Thames valley, lit red by burning Richmond and Kingston
  8. At twilight a towering black cloud of poison vapour rolls toward a battery near Esher
  9. The black vapour rolls over the waiting battery near Esher at twilight.

Chapter 16The Flight North with the Elphinstones

  1. Grey Monday dawn over the Pool of London, seen from high above Tower Bridge.
  2. The narrator's brother runs round the corner of a grass lane near High Barnet.
  3. Near High Barnet, Miss Elphinstone half-rises in the pony-chaise and aims her revolver
  4. Outside Barnet, Mrs. Elphinstone half-rises in the chaise, crying out at red flames
  5. The brother and the Elphinstones' pony-chaise stop at the mouth of the grass lane
  6. On the Barnet road, a dust-choked servant pulls at the brother's sleeve and begs for water
  7. A young man lunges too late for the horse as a wheel rolls over a bearded man's back
  8. The bearded man with the gold lies in the dust of the Barnet road.
  9. The brother turns the pony back and tells Miss Elphinstone they must cross the high road
  10. The brother holds a cab horse as Miss Elphinstone drives the chaise into the fugitives
  11. Near East Barnet, the brother and the Elphinstones watch two overloaded trains crawl north

Chapter 17The Thunder Child's sacrifice

  1. Seen from a balloon, every road out of London is stippled black with six million fugitives
  2. Near Tillingham, the brother and Miss Elphinstone see a vast crescent of ships in the mist
  3. On the crowded paddle steamer, the brother stands on a bench beside the two Elphinstones
  4. The torpedo ram Thunder Child tears past the little paddle steamer.
  5. The brother grips the bulwark as a Martian lowers its Heat-Ray at the Thunder Child
  6. Seen from the deck of the fleeing paddle steamer, the first Martian topples into the sea
  7. The burning Thunder Child drives at a second Martian as her decks burst in a flash
  8. The brother cries out as the burning Thunder Child crumples the second Martian
  9. Refugees on the steamer watch a huge flat shape drop a black curtain on the Essex shore

Chapter 18Buried by the fifth cylinder

  1. A lone brick house at Upper Halliford sits in a clearing as black smoke closes in
  2. A Martian steam jet bursts through the front-room windows of the empty house at Halliford.
  3. The narrator and the curate walk east toward Richmond Bridge along a road buried in black dust.
  4. Near Kew at dusk, the narrator and the curate stop dead on a white suburban road.
  5. At twilight, the narrator and the curate stand frozen on the Kew road.
  6. A blinding green flash floods the dark kitchen at Sheen; the narrator and curate freeze
  7. Grey dawn through a triangular gap in the broken wall shows the wrecked kitchen at Sheen
  8. Through a gap in the rubble, a fighting-machine stands still over the glowing cylinder
  9. Buried in the dark scullery, the narrator sits against the stone sink, his temple bruised

Chapter 19The Martians seen through the slit

  1. Stretched across a fallen beam, the narrator presses his eye to a fresh slit in the rubble
  2. Through a triangular slit in the rubble, the huge new crater at Sheen comes into view
  3. The narrator watches a five-legged handling-machine pull rods and plates from the cylinder
  4. Through a slit, the narrator sees a Martian strain to lift its head-body on its tentacles
  5. Seen from the pit's edge, the narrator's grey eyes fill the narrow slit in the rubble.
  6. Days later, blood-red weed climbs the pit and hangs in crimson branches round the peephole
  7. Inside the wrecked kitchen at Sheen, the curate drags the narrator away from the only peephole.
  8. The handling-machine fits plates onto a second machine shaped like itself

Chapter 20Quarrel in the dark, Martians in the pit

  1. The narrator and the curate dash stooped across the kitchen toward the dark scullery
  2. Back at the triangular gap, the narrator sees the crews of three fighting-machines in camp
  3. A steel tentacle lowers a dazzling new bar of white aluminium onto a growing stack
  4. At dusk, a crouching fighting-machine raises a struggling black shape against the stars
  5. In a flash of green firelight, a stout, ruddy gentleman hangs in a Martian's tentacle
  6. Through the gap, the narrator's wide wet eyes catch the green glare as the hooting rises
  7. Alone in the dark scullery, the narrator forces his fear down into cold resolve
  8. On the third day the narrator has watched the Martians feed.
  9. On a still, moonlit night, the narrator presses his face to the gap and holds his breath

Chapter 21The curate's madness and death

  1. For two days the narrator and the curate fight in silence over the food.
  2. By the scullery sink, the narrator says nothing to the curate's whispered threat to shout
  3. The curate shouts his prophecy, arms wide, as the narrator raises a hand to hush him
  4. Wild with fear, the narrator chases the raving curate with the meat chopper raised
  5. In the ruined kitchen, the narrator catches the raving curate and lifts the meat chopper
  6. Plaster pours down as a handling-machine slides across the hole and blots out the sun
  7. The narrator stands frozen over the fallen curate in the wrecked kitchen.
  8. The narrator watches a Martian's handling-machine lift the curate's limp body
  9. A Martian's metal tentacle sways blindly above the narrator, buried to the chin in coal
  10. The Martian's blind tentacle stops against the heel of the narrator's buried boot
  11. Half-buried in the coal cellar, the narrator bites down on his own hand to keep from screaming.

Chapter 22Starvation and the empty pit

  1. The narrator's rag-bound hand lies limp on a bare pantry shelf beside empty biscuit-tins
  2. On the twelfth day without water, the starving narrator works the creaking pump
  3. The starving narrator creeps up the rubble, but the gap in the red weed is already empty
  4. Through the peephole, the great pit at Sheen lies empty and silent in bright daylight
  5. After fifteen days buried, the starved narrator presses his dust-caked face into the gap
  6. After fifteen days buried in the ruined house, the starved narrator pushes out through the red weed.
  7. On the fifteenth day, the starved narrator claws his way up the rubble slope
  8. The starved narrator stands on the rubble mound that buried his refuge.
  9. Free after fifteen days, the narrator stands on the rubble mound among the red weed

Chapter 23Alone in the Red Weed Wasteland

  1. The starved narrator stands swaying on the rubble mound above the empty Martian pit
  2. The narrator stands swaying on the rubble summit at Sheen.
  3. From high above, the narrator is a tiny figure on the mound over the empty Martian pit
  4. Starving, the narrator limps west towards Kew down an avenue of trees hung with red weed
  5. The Thames valley lies drowned under brown floodwater and blood-red weed
  6. On Putney Common, the starving narrator stands on the step of an intact villa with drawn blinds.
  7. Among bleached bones on Putney Common, the starving Narrator gnaws one like a dog
  8. At dusk the starving narrator stands at the far wall of an abandoned potato garden.
  9. On Putney Hill, the narrator comes on a skeleton picked clean, its arms torn off
  10. At grey dusk, the stooped narrator stands where three empty roads meet on Putney Hill

Chapter 24The Artilleryman's Dream of Underground

  1. On a moonless night, the inn atop Putney Hill stands black and silent, every window dark
  2. In the dark inn bedroom, the narrator sits bolt upright in the iron bed and prays
  3. At sunrise, a crouching shape in the bushes stands up: a ragged soldier with a cutlass
  4. At dawn, the artilleryman lowers his cutlass and grips the grey-haired narrator's hand
  5. Two filthy survivors crouch in a leafy bower on Wimbledon Common, staring at each other
  6. The philosopher grips the soldier's hand, moved by his resolve to live on underground
  7. In the bower, the artilleryman grips the narrator's arm and lifts his face to the sky
  8. The artilleryman's swagger drains away in the candlelit coal cellar.
  9. From a Putney rooftop, sunlit gardens give way to a Thames choked with blood-red weed
  10. From a Putney rooftop at night, the narrator looks out over black, dead London.
  11. On the dark roof, the narrator is overcome with disgust at the day's cards and cigars

Chapter 25Dead London: the Martians found dead

  1. Dead London on the morning of the thirty-second day, seen from high above.
  2. On the Serpentine bridge at noon, the endless "Ulla, ulla" finally wears the narrator down.
  3. At sunset the narrator stops alone in the empty middle of Park Road.
  4. At twilight on the road to St. John's Wood, the narrator climbs what he thinks is a fallen house.
  5. On the Regent's Canal bridge, the narrator stops dead as the Martian's howl breaks off
  6. At dawn on St. Edmund's Terrace, the exhausted narrator sees birds circling the Martian's hood.
  7. At dawn on Primrose Hill, the narrator looks down into the Martians' great pit
  8. Past the Martian pit and two dead tripods, London lies whole and silent at sunrise
  9. From the redoubt on Primrose Hill, the narrator looks out over silent London at sunrise
  10. At sunrise the narrator stands alone on the earthen rampart above the pit of dead Martians.
  11. At sunrise on Primrose Hill, the narrator suddenly remembers his wife and his old life

Chapter 26Wreckage and Homecoming

  1. On the summit of Primrose Hill, the narrator stands weeping, his hands raised in praise
  2. In a black-dusted street of St. John's Wood, the demented narrator staggers and sings
  3. The kindly host gently tells the Narrator that Leatherhead has been destroyed
  4. From a train, a small Union Jack flaps over the heaped earth around the sixth cylinder
  5. Home at last on a bright June day, the narrator stops at his garden gate.
  6. Back in his dust-filled study, the narrator lifts the sheet he left a month ago
  7. In his ruined dining room, the narrator freezes as an unseen voice speaks his despair
  8. At the French window, the narrator sees his wife alive on the lawn with his cousin
  9. In the sunlit June garden, the narrator's wife looks at the husband she believed dead.
  10. The wife sways, hand to her throat, as the narrator lunges off the step to catch her

Chapter 27Epilogue: Doubt and Aftermath

  1. Six years on, the narrator's villa stands quiet on Maybury Hill, one study window lit
  2. The narrator has finished writing for the night.
  3. From the narrator's study window, a single shooting star falls toward Horsell Common
  4. The narrator half-rises from his desk as the quiet valley turns back into a burning one
  5. Sightseers crane up at the dead fighting-machine on Primrose Hill as children play
  6. In his lamplit study, the narrator holds the hand of the wife he had counted as dead
  7. On the night he finishes his story, the narrator holds his wife's hand on the last pages