War of the Worlds

5 THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

THE WAR OF H. G. Wells THE WORLDS

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Will Earth survive?

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The cylinder opens and some very strange things start to come out. They are certainly Martians, and they don’t seem at all friendly. Then more and more cylinders arrive on Earth, and the war between the worlds has started.

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One night in early summer, a strange cylinder crashes into Earth. It lands near London, and scientists think that it has come from Mars.

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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

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5 THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

H. G. Wells

Retold by Bill Bowler

graded readers

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Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil) Wells, H. G. The war of the worlds: level 5: standfor graded readers / H. G. Wells; retold by Bill Bowler – 1. ed. – São Paulo : FTD, 2017.

ISBN: 978-85-96-01102-0 (aluno) ISBN: 978-85-96-01103-7 (professor) 1. Inglês (Ensino fundamental) I. Bowler, Bill. II. Título.

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1. Inglês : Ensino fundamental

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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was born near London, England. The Wells family had a small shop, and Herbert’s father also earned a little money from playing cricket, but they were always poor. Wells had to leave school when he was fourteen, and worked in a shop for thirteen hours a day.

However, he continued to find time to study, and, in 1884, he became a student at the Normal School of Science in London.

After graduating, he worked for a while as a science teacher.

His first book was a school textbook for biology.

Wells published his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895, and many of his early books were science fiction, including The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). He is considered to be one of the fathers of science fiction, and he became one of the most successful novelists of his time.

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BEFORE READING

1

Look at the picture on the front of the book and read the back cover. Check the correct answers.

1. This story is about… a. people from Earth landing on the planet Mars. b. Martians landing on Earth.

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c. Martians landing on the planet Venus. d. the death of planet Earth.

2. The Martians in the story… a. travel around in six-legged machines. b. have slow brains and can’t think well. c. are very good at making machines. d. help to make our civilization better.

3. In the story,… a. the Martians take the city of London. b. human refugees travel to other planets. c. the British government makes peace with the Martians. d. the British army kills the Martians.

4. The story writer… a. leaves his wife in danger at the start of the war. b. takes his wife to stay with friends when the fighting begins. c. forgets all about his wife and becomes a soldier. d. loves his wife and hopes to find her again alive.

2

Check the things that you think are in the story. the president

blood

a white flag

a Martian festival

a priest

the British queen

big guns

Martian fashions

a warship

a cough

Martian plants

Martian food

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Chapter

1

Before the War

Nobody realized it, but at the end of the nineteenth century, highly intelligent creatures were watching us. Nobody on Earth thought about the dangers that could come from outside our planet.

Most people believed that the chances of finding life on other planets were low.

But across the great emptiness between the planets, cold and unfeeling creatures, with smarter brains than ours, looked at our world with greedy eyes. Slowly but surely, they made their plans against us. And in the early twentieth century, we learned the truth.

The planet Mars is over two hundred million kilometers from the sun. It receives less than half the light and heat from the sun that we get on Earth. If scientists are right, and the furthest planets from our sun cooled first, then Mars is older than Earth.

When our planet was still a soft ball of burning rock, life on our neighbor planet Mars probably started. Because it is small, it probably cooled very quickly to the perfect temperature for life to begin. Mars has air and water and everything that is needed to keep plants and animals alive.

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The War of the Worlds

But humans could not see the facts in front of them. Until the end of the nineteenth century, few writers thought about life on Mars; and nobody wrote about it being possibly older and more intelligent than human life. Nor did people understand that – because Mars is further from the sun and smaller than Earth – it was nearer to the end of its life than our planet.

Although plenty of things about life on the red planet are a mystery, we now know that during the summer, the temperature in the middle of the day is as cold as our coldest winter. The air on Mars is thinner than our air, and its once great oceans now cover only a third of the planet. In winter, heavy snow falls in the north and south. This later becomes water which covers much of its warmer land. Fighting against this weather has made Martian brains smarter, and their bodies stronger, and it has hardened their hearts. They look towards Earth, closer to the sun and warmer than their planet. Our world is green with plants and blue with water, and between the clouds they can see large areas of rich land with crowds of people, and narrow seas full of ships.

We must seem foreign to them, lower animals. Their world is cold and not inviting. Our world is warm and full of life, but for them we are unintelligent creatures. For this reason, they planned a war with us. This was the only way they could escape the slow death of their planet.

They chose when to land on Earth carefully. And before they arrived, they planned everything perfectly. Earlier in the nineteenth century, people noticed that the lines crossing Mars appeared and disappeared. But they failed to understand the reason. Isn’t it strange that over centuries we have thought of Mars as the planet of war? During those hundreds of years, it appears that the Martians were getting ready. In 1894, a great light was seen on the sunny side of Mars by many astronomers. I believe that the Martians were building the gun that they later used in their attack on Earth. Astronomers from Italy, America, and France all 6

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Before the War | Chapter 1

studied the red planet, but none of them understood the dangers that it held for us.

Six years ago, the war began. It happened when the distance between Earth and Mars was at its narrowest. At that time, the astronomer Lavelle noticed, just before midnight on May 12th, a sudden explosion on the planet. Shortly afterwards, he informed other astronomers that a large ball of burning gas was traveling very fast towards us. At around quarter past midnight the tail of the fire-ball suddenly disappeared. Lavelle explained excitedly, “It seemed that somebody was shooting a ball of fire from a gun.” His words were close to the truth, we discovered later.

The next day a newspaper reported the story. I heard about it through a friend living in the village of Ottershaw, the famous astronomer Ogilvy. He invited me to study the red planet with him the next evening. I remember it well.

In the silent night, I looked up at Mars, so brilliant, small, and far away in the dark sky. But the night hid from me the Thing that they were sending to us. Nobody on Earth knew about that Thing, moving ever nearer. Nobody on Earth knew about the war, the fighting, and the death which that Thing contained. Those were still in our future.

I got up to drink some water and Ogilvy watched in my place.

At midnight, there was another explosion on Mars. Although we could not see it at the time, another dark missile had just started on its way towards Earth, only twenty-four hours after the first. At one o’clock, Ogilvy and I walked back to his house.

He did not believe there was any intelligent life of Mars.

“I suppose that those explosions are the result of a meteorite storm hitting the planet. Not Martians sending us a message,” he explained.

Many people saw the gas explosion on Mars that night. The next night, at midnight, there was another similar explosion.

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There was an explosion every night for ten nights, and then suddenly, they stopped.

Human life continued. One evening, I went for a walk with my wife. I explained to her the different stars in the night sky and I pointed out Mars, too. It was a warm night and a group of noisy, happy people passed us. They were

Astronomers from Italy, America, and France all studied the red planet.

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returning from a day out. We heard the trains in the local station and we saw the lights in the top windows of the houses when people went upstairs to bed. It all seemed so safe and peaceful.

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The War of the Worlds

Some nights later, the first falling star arrived on Earth.

It left a thin line of green fire behind it in the sky. I was studying in my room, but I didn’t look up and see it, although the glass doors that open onto my garden look towards Ottershaw. Many people who saw it thought it was a large meteorite. Nobody went to look for it that night. But, early the next morning, Ogilvy searched for it. In the first light of day, he found it, on the flat, open land between Ottershaw and the village of Horsell. The missile had made a large, deep hole in the ground and had thrown up rocks wildly in all directions when it landed. You could see the hill of small rocks from a kilometer away. The burning grass behind it sent up blue smoke into the morning sky.

It wasn’t natural.

It was designed.

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Before the War | Chapter 1

The cylinder was long and made of metal. Brown dirt covered most of it. Ogilvy went nearer. He was surprised by its size.

It was thirty meters long. And it was different from any meteorite that he had ever seen. It wasn’t natural. It was designed.

Ogilvy heard sounds of movement from inside the Thing. Dry gray dirt fell off the back of it. Maybe it was cooling?

Then he saw that the upper end of the cylinder was moving slowly in a circle, and he understood. Somebody was opening it from inside. His quick brain jumped to the explosions on Mars.

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“Good God!” he cried. “Are there men inside it? Do they want to escape?”

He stepped forward without thinking, but the burning heat that came from the metal stopped him from touching the cylinder and hurting his hands. He left the hole and hurried into the nearest town, Woking. When he arrived, at six in the morning, he looked crazy and nobody listened to him.

Then he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden.

“Henderson,” he called over the wall. “Did you see that shooting star last night? It crashed into the open ground near Horsell.”

“A meteorite!” answered Henderson. “Good.”

“But it’s not a meteorite,” explained Ogilvy. “It’s a metal cylinder.

Somebody designed it. And there’s something inside it!”

He told Henderson the full story.

Henderson listened and then put on his jacket. He hurried with Ogilvy to the cylinder. A thin ring of bright yellow metal showed between the end and the main body of it. Through this they could hear the thin sound of air noisily entering the Thing or escaping from it. They called, they listened, they hit the hard silver outside of the cylinder, but they heard no answer. They decided that the men inside must either be dead or too weak to talk.

They ran back into town for help. From the station, Henderson sent the story to his newspaper in London. Soon everybody was talking about the “Dead Men from Mars”.

This was what the newspaper boy told me when I went for my morning paper. Learning from him that a large metal cylinder had crashed into the open country near Horsell, I hurried over Horsell Bridge to see it.

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Chapter

2

The Cylinder Opens

I found a number of people standing around the deep hole in the ground where the metal cylinder lay.

Henderson and Ogilvy weren’t there. I believe that – because they could do nothing more – they had gone for breakfast at Ogilvy’s house.

When I arrived, four or five boys were sitting at the edge of the hole. They were throwing rocks at the cylinder until I told them to stop. Then they began running after each other through the small crowd of twenty people around the hole. In this crowd, there were two cyclists, a gardener, a girl with a baby, and two or three young men. They didn’t talk much.

Most people then didn’t know much about planets and stars.

They were just looking at the end of the cylinder, which was as big as the top of a large round table. Nobody seemed very excited. I think that they had expected to see dead Martians lying around. The cylinder alone was quite boring. I climbed into the hole and started to study it.

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The War of the Worlds

It was clearly not of this Earth, and I decided that it must be from Mars. Although Ogilvy didn’t agree with me, I still believed in intelligent life on the red planet.

I felt that perhaps this missile had papers, messages, and models inside it, but no Martians. Maybe it simply contained a machine which had opened the top a little way. I wanted to see the Thing fully open and to learn what was inside it.

Because nothing much was happening, at about eleven o’clock, I went home. I couldn’t work before lunch; I was too busy thinking about the cylinder from Mars. That afternoon, the London evening newspapers reported the story.

MESSAGE FROM MARS AMAZING STORY FROM WOKING When I went back in the afternoon, I found a larger crowd of people. Some had walked from local villages. Some had cycled. There were several cabs there, which had brought people from the station. Some ladies were wearing fashionable clothes. The son of a smart local store-keeper was selling apples and bottles of sweet lemon juice.

It was hot. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or any wind. I walked over to the cylinder and found Ogilvy and Henderson in the hole, with ten other men. One of them was tall with fair hair and a red face. He was standing on the cylinder – now much cooler than before. And he was shouting orders to some workers who were digging around it. I later discovered that he was Stent, the Queen’s Astronomer.

When Ogilvy saw me, he called me over.

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The Cylinder Opens | Chapter 2

“Could you go and speak to Lord Hilton, the owner of the land here?” he asked me. “We’re having trouble working with this big crowd watching us. The boys get in the way.

We want to keep everybody at a distance. The workers can’t open the end of the cylinder. There’s nothing that they can hold on to, you see.”

I walked over to Lord Hilton’s country house, but they told me that he was up in London and that they expected him to arrive on the six o’clock train. It was a quarter past five, so I went home, had some tea, and walked over to meet him at the station. He agreed to talk to the police about the crowd of people around the hole.

When I came back to the cylinder, the sun was going down.

The crowd around the hole was bigger than before. There were maybe two hundred people there when I arrived.

They were shouting and pushing each other. “What’s happening?” I wondered.

Then I heard Stent’s voice. “Stand back!” he was shouting.

A boy ran towards me. “The top’s opening! I don’t like it.

I’m going home!” he cried.

I walked over to the crowd. Those people in front – at the edge of the deep hole – were pushing backwards. They didn’t want to fall in. Those people at the back were pushing with great energy in the other direction. They wanted to see better. Some of the ladies were the worst pushers of all.

“He’s fallen into the hole!” somebody cried.

The crowd moved nervously. I pushed my way through to the front. A store-worker from Woking was standing on top of the cylinder. The crowd had pushed him into the hole and he wanted to get out.

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The War of the Worlds

The end of the cylinder was slowly moving round.

Something was opening it from inside. Then somebody knocked against my back and I nearly fell over. Just then, the top of the cylinder came off. It fell with a loud crash onto the rocky ground below. The hole in the top of the cylinder at first seemed to be perfectly black.

I think that everybody expected to see a man step out.

Perhaps a little different from humans on Earth, but a man all the same. When I looked, I saw some movement in the shadows. The shapes were cloudy and grayish, and

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The Cylinder Opens | Chapter 2

then two flat, shining eyes appeared. After that, a gray snaky thing – as thin as a tree branch – lifted itself up into the air and came towards me. It was followed immediately by another long gray tentacle. I suddenly felt very cold. A woman behind me screamed. I began to push myself back from the edge of the hole, away from the cylinder and the waving tentacles. I watched as the looks of surprise on the faces of the people around me become looks of horror. I heard worried shouts on all sides. The crowd moved backwards.

The young store-worker still couldn’t get out of the deep hole.

The top of the cylinder came off.

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The War of the Worlds

I found myself alone. People ran away – Stent among them – but I stayed and watched. A wild horror held me there. I was so scared that I couldn’t move.

A strange creature was pulling itself out of the cylinder with painful slowness. Its body was big, rounded, and brownish-gray in color. Its skin shone wetly in the light. Its two dark eyes were fixed on me. It had a strange face in its soft, egg-shaped head. There was an ugly V-shaped mouth under the eyes. It breathed quickly and noisily through this strange hole with its straight edges. One of its tentacles was holding the side of the cylinder. The other was waving about in the air.

For people who have never seen a living Martian, it is impossible to fully understand the strange horror you feel when you are close to one. They breathe noisily because the air on Mars is different from our air. They move slowly and painfully because their fat bodies are heavier on Earth than on their home planet. Their great, flat eyes are unnatural and frightening. Their oily brown-gray skin cannot fail to sicken you.

Suddenly the Martian disappeared. It had fallen with a strange cry from the open end of the cylinder to the ground below. Immediately another Martian appeared in the dark hole and began to come out.

I ran back towards a line of trees a hundred meters in the distance. But I continued to look over my shoulder to see what was happening behind me.

Once I was safely among the trees I waited, breathing heavily, and watched. Here and there, many other people stood in twos and threes, watching events with interest.

With horror, I saw the head of the store-worker from Woking appear above the edge of the hole. He still couldn’t climb out. He had his shoulder and his knee over the edge.

Then he seemed to fall back again until I could see only his 18

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The Cylinder Opens | Chapter 2

head. Finally, that, too, disappeared. I thought that I heard a weak cry when it did. “Should I run back to help him?” I wondered. But I was too frightened.

Some of the crowd had already left. But about a hundred people still stood in a large circle. They hid behind trees, gates, and walls, and they looked across at the deep hole with the large cylinder in the middle. When they did speak, they did it in short, excited shouts. The boy selling lemon juice and apples had run home, leaving his bottles and boxes of fruit behind. Several empty cabs – their horses shaking their heads nervously – stood in a line. Their drivers were nowhere to be seen.

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Chapter

The Heat-Ray

3

After I saw the Martians leave the cylinder, I couldn’t move. Half of me wanted to go and look at them.

The other half was too scared – so I just watched at a distance.

Once there was a sudden movement of tentacles near the cylinder. Later a long rod slowly lifted a large, round mirror high into the air. What was happening? In the end, I began walking around the cylinder in a wide circle. Many other people were doing the same. I met a neighbor of mine on my way, but he didn’t recognize me. He was talking to himself. “What ugly creatures!” he repeated.

“Did you see the man in the hole?” I asked, but he didn’t reply. Later I saw him leave in the direction of Woking.

Little by little, I and many other people began to move towards the cylinder. Some cab drivers went back to their empty cabs and drove them away. A young boy came and rescued the apple boxes. Then I saw a group of people with a white flag.

Because the Martians had seemed intelligent, this group wanted to show that we were intelligent, too,

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and that we wanted to talk. I didn’t recognize the people in the group. I was too far away. I learned later that Ogilvy, Henderson, and Stent were among them. They waved their white flag and moved slowly towards the cylinder. I and a group of other people followed them.

Just then, a sudden light shone from the hole and bright green smoke went up into the air above it. Green fire lit the faces of the people with the white flag.

They waved their white flag and moved slowly towards the cylinder.

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The War of the Worlds

With a low noise, a machine with a rounded top slowly came up out of the hole and shone a narrow ray of weak light towards the group with the white flag. One by one, the ray touched each person in the group, and each person it touched was suddenly covered in white fire. Everybody behind them ran off. As the ray moved over trees and small buildings, these also began to burn. I saw the heat-ray moving in a great half circle. It came closer to me. A horse screamed and fell suddenly silent. I couldn’t escape. I was surprised when the machine with the rounded top became silent and went down again into the hole. I was saved by chance at the last moment. The rod that held the mirror stayed high in the air.

It continued to move around without stopping.

Everything had been so quick. The group of people with the white flag was dead. The Martians’ heat-ray had burned them alive. I looked around me. Trees and some houses on the way to Woking Station were burning. I was filled with horror, and began to run away. I was afraid of the Martians, the darkness, and the quietness. I didn’t look behind me. I felt sure that the Martians were waiting until I had nearly escaped, but that they planned to kill me at the last minute with their burning heat-ray.

Who knows how the Martian heat-ray works? They say that the mirror sends out a dark ray that burns everything in its way. Metal becomes soft, glass breaks, and living things burn when the heat-ray touches them. Fire had burned, blackened, and killed forty people that night. Their dead bodies lay around the hole in the ground which held the Martian cylinder. Their faces were unrecognizable.

The people of Woking had not yet learned of the Martian attack, but they had heard of the strange cylinder. Later in the day, they closed their shops and came across Horsell Bridge to visit the land around the Martian missile.

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The Heat-Ray | Chapter 3

Many did not know that the cylinder was open, although Henderson had sent a cyclist to the station with a fresh report for the London evening papers.

The police had been called to the place – two of them on foot and one on a horse. Under Stent’s orders, these men had stopped the crowd from getting too near the cylinder. Just after the Martians first came out of the cylinder, Stent and Ogilvy had sent a message to the local army office. They had asked for soldiers to come and protect the Martians from any human attacks.

Then Stent and Ogilvy had gone with their white flag to speak with the Martians and the heat-ray had killed them. Four hundred people saw the attack. Most were saved from sudden and painful death themselves by a low hill which stood between them and the Martians’ mirror. Although they saw trees burn, windows become soft, house walls break, and roofs fall because of the terrible ray, they themselves stayed safe.

But the crowd became nervous. Burning leaves fell, and hats and dresses caught fire. There were screams and shouts. A policeman rode his horse through the crowd. His hands were over his ears and he was screaming.

“They’re coming!” a woman shouted. At this, everybody began to run along the road to Woking. This road becomes very narrow when it passes between two pieces of high ground, and people pushed through this narrow place in a careless hurry – a crowd of frightened sheep. They hit and kicked each other while they fought to escape. Two women and a boy fell under the heavy feet of the crowd. They were badly hurt and left behind on the cold ground to die in the terrible darkness.

I ran away with the others. Horror filled my brain. After a time, I felt exhausted. I stopped to rest by the road, under the bridge that goes over the canal by the gasworks. When I woke, the horror had left me. I felt calmer.

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I walked over the bridge towards my house and passed a man in the road with a basket in his hand and a boy next to him.

He wished me a good evening but I didn’t answer. A train went by in the darkness. I couldn’t forget the horror that I had left behind me. I passed three people who were talking over a garden gate.

“What’s the news about the Martians?” I asked.

“Haven’t you just come from there?” one of the men asked.

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My wife was worried by my wild looks and my white face.

“I really don’t know what’s so interesting about some men from Mars,” said the woman. The three of them laughed.

I began to speak but I found that I couldn’t tell them about the Martian heat-ray and the deaths that I had seen. I felt stupid and angry with myself.

“You’ll see soon enough,” I cried. “Just you wait.”

When I got home I went straight into the dining room and drank some wine to make me feel stronger. My wife was worried by my wild looks and my white face. She sat down and listened while I told her everything that I had seen and heard.

A dinner was ready on the table, but I ate little of it.

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“Maybe Ogilvy is lying dead on the ground back there!” I said.

“Perhaps the Martians will come here,” my wife repeated several times.

“That’s not possible,” I answered her. “Mars is three times smaller than Earth so their bodies must feel three times heavier here. Because of their greater weight on Earth, they move slowly and painfully. All the time that I was watching them, they couldn’t leave the hole that their cylinder had crashed into.”

I didn’t know then that when Martians breathe our air – which is richer than the air on Mars – it makes them feel much stronger than on their home planet. I also did not realize then that Martians were so good at making machines.

I told my wife, “Don’t worry. They won’t come here.”

After dinner, I smoked a cigarette and continued explaining things calmly to my wife, “The Martians were probably scared so they attacked us. But they behaved stupidly. We’ll send in the army tomorrow with a heavy gun. One big explosion should kill them all.”

Although I didn’t know it at the time, my dinner that night was my last real meal for many days.

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Chapter

4

The Fighting Begins

It was strange. In Woking, and the villages near it, most people knew about the Martians and what had happened after they landed. But ten miles away, only the families of Stent, and the other people who had been killed, had seen any change in their lives.

In London, the people from Henderson’s newspaper had wanted to speak to him after they received his news about the opening of the cylinder. Because he was dead, they couldn’t reach him, so they believed that he had invented the story for a laugh. They didn’t print it.

Even in Woking, and the villages around it, life continued.

People worked in their gardens after they got home from the office. Children were sent up to bed. Lovers walked through parks or fields speaking together sweetly.

Naturally, people talked in the village streets and pubs.

Newspaper boys outside the station shouted, “Read all about it!

Ships from Mars!” People on trains to London saw red smoke near Horsell but they thought it was just a forest fire. Six or seven houses on one side of the open country were burning.

In the houses on the other side, lights shone in the windows because the people in them couldn’t sleep.

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The War of the Worlds

Some people still visited Horsell Bridge to see what was happening. A few crawled through the darkness towards the Martians, but they never returned. Now and then a light-ray searched the ground for humans, and the heat-ray followed it.

The people who visited the place that first night and the next day heard the Martians working on something. This continued through the night because the Martians did not sleep. From time to time, greenish-white smoke traveled up into the starry sky.

At eleven, many soldiers arrived. They took their places in a great circle around the cylinder near Horsell. The army clearly recognized the seriousness of the Martian attack. At midnight, people in Woking saw a greenish star fall from the sky into a forest north-west of the town. It was the second cylinder.

I didn’t sleep much. The next morning, the milkman came at the usual time. I went to the side door when I heard the noise of his milk cart and asked him for news of the Martians.

“The army’s watching them. They’re going to bring the big guns later. But they won’t kill the creatures if they can help it.”

I also spoke to my next-door neighbor in his garden. “It’s sad that they’re not more friendly,” he said. “I’d like to learn more about life on Mars.”

He gave me some fruit from his garden while he spoke.

“A second cylinder has fallen north of here. We don’t need another. It’ll cost plenty of money to fix everything that the Martians have already burned,” he laughed.

After breakfast, I walked towards Horsell. Under the bridge near the gasworks, I found some soldiers. They told me, 28

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The Fighting Begins | Chapter 4

“Nobody can go through this bridge any longer – orders from above.” I stayed and talked with them. They spoke about fighting the Martians, so I described their tentacles, heavy bodies and large eyes. I explained about their terrible heat-ray, too.

“I say we should crawl close to them and attack them from the front,” said one man.

“No. We should dig under them and attack them from behind,” answered his friend.

“Why do you always want to dig under the ground?” asked the first speaker.

“They don’t sound human,” said a dark little man.

“Ugly fishy things.”

“It isn’t murder – killing those creatures,” replied the first speaker.

“I say we should bring in the big guns and do it now – while we have a chance. You can’t tell what they’ll do,” said the dark little man.

I left for the train station and bought several newspapers there. One of them described the deaths of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. There was little that I didn’t know already in the different news stories about the Martians.

The army employed a man with a flag to send peace messages to the Martians, but they didn’t seem to notice. They were working busily in their deep hole, and sending up green smoke into the sky. For them, the soldier’s flag-waving was about as interesting as the movements of a cow’s tail are to us.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, we heard explosions to the north-west of the town. The army there was attacking the second cylinder. They hoped to destroy it before it opened.

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The War of the Worlds

At five o’clock, the army finally brought a big gun to Horsell to use against the first cylinder. At six o’clock, I had tea with my wife in the garden. We talked together about the Martian attack. Suddenly we heard the noise of guns towards Horsell. Immediately afterwards, the large old college across from our house in Maybury Hill was covered in fire. The trees around it burned. The top of the church next to it was destroyed, and most of the college roof had fallen to the ground.

I explained about their terrible heat-ray, too.

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The Fighting Begins | Chapter 4

Now that the college was partly destroyed, the Martians’ death-ray could reach our house, I realized. I held my wife’s arm and took her out into the road. I brought out her traveling box, too.

“We can’t possibly stay here,” I said.

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The War of the Worlds

“But where can we go?” she asked.

“To Leatherhead,” I answered. I had cousins there. The sound of guns near Horsell continued. We looked down the hill. Soldiers were riding their horses under the railroad bridge. Three of them rode through the open gates of the college. Two of them got off their horses and began running from house to house in our street. The sun seemed as red as blood in the smoke. It threw its strangely colorful light over everything.

“Wait here,” I told my wife. “You’ll be safe for the moment.”

I hurried over to the College Arms pub. I found the landlord in the bar.

“Can I borrow your horse and cart?” I asked.

“Give me a pound for it, and you can,” he answered. “But I don’t have a driver.”

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’ll give you two pounds. I’ll take it with no driver, and I’ll bring it back by midnight.”

“What’s the hurry?” asked the man. “What’s happening?”

“I need to leave my home,” I explained quickly. I paid the money and got the cart.

I drove the cart back to my wife. Leaving the cart with her and our cook, I ran into our house and put all our valuables in a bag. I left with this in my hand.

One of the soldiers passed our house. He was telling everybody to leave.

“What news?” I asked him.

He looked at me strangely and said, “They’re coming out – in a big metal bowl thing!” Then he ran to the next house.

I got into the driver’s seat of the cart. My wife climbed into the passenger seat, and the cook sat at the back. We drove away quickly down Maybury Hill towards Old Woking.

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The Fighting Begins | Chapter 4

Before us, the fields were calm, sunny, and peaceful. I noticed the doctor’s cart in front of us on the road. At the bottom of the hill, I looked back. The sky was full of black smoke and red fire. People were running down the street towards us.

The noise of guns and explosions filled the air. It seemed the Martians were destroying everything that they could reach with their heat-ray.

I turned back to the horse and made him go as fast as he could.

Soon there was another hill between us and our old home. We passed the doctor’s cart just after we left Old Woking.

Leatherhead is about nineteen kilometers from Maybury Hill.

My wife was worried on the way there, and spoke little. By nine o’clock we had arrived with no trouble. After an hour’s rest, I left my wife with my cousins and started back for Maybury Hill. I almost stayed in Leatherhead, but I had promised the pub landlord to bring back his horse and cart that night.

While I was driving home, the night became darker. A storm was on its way. When I came through Pyrford village, I could see Maybury Hill in the distance. I also noticed a green star light up the sky. It fell through the clouds and landed in the fields to my left. It was the third Martian cylinder!

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Chapter

In the Storm

5

When I got to the foot of Maybury Hill, the storm began. The rain came down and forks of bright lightning were followed by loud crashes of thunder which shook the cloudy sky. My horse went crazy and ran.

Then I noticed it – on the hill opposite. It was lit by the lightning. At first I thought it was the wet roof of a house. Then I saw that it was a large metal tripod as high as several houses. It came quickly towards me on its three long legs and kicked over several trees in its way. Suddenly I saw a second tripod. It stepped out of the forest to my left. I was driving my horse and cart straight towards it.

Quickly I pulled my horse to the right. The cart fell over and broke with a crash. I was thrown into some shallow water.

I climbed out immediately and hid among some plants.

My poor horse, which had broken its neck, was dead. The second tripod went past me and up the low hill to Pyrford that I had just traveled down. Close to, it looked very strange.

It was a machine, but it seemed almost alive. It had long metal tentacles around its strange body. One of these held a small tree. The rounded “head” on top of the Thing moved from side to side. Behind its body, there was a large basket of white 34

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metal, and little clouds of green smoke came from its legs when it moved.

When it walked past, it gave a loud cry: “Aloo! Aloo!” Then it joined the other tripod, a kilometer away on the side of the hill. I was sure that they were standing over the third Martian cylinder that had landed there.

I was cold and wet, but I couldn’t move because I was so frightened. After some time, I began to climb Maybury Hill. It was dark and raining heavily. Finally, I stepped out into a narrow country road that comes down from the College Arms pub. A man ran into me in the darkness and gave a cry of horror. I fell backwards. Before we could speak, he ran off, scared. I held onto the wall that stands at one side of the road and climbed up the hill.

I saw that it was a large metal tripod.

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The War of the Worlds

Just before I reached the top, I fell over something soft that lay on the ground. It was a dead man in a black coat and boots. Something had thrown him against the wall and broken his neck. In the light of the storm, I saw his face. He was the landlord of the College Arms pub – the man who had lent me the horse and cart.

I stepped over him nervously and went up the hill to my house. I opened the front door with my key, and locked it again once I was inside. I couldn’t stop thinking of those tripods and the dead body against the wall. I sat at the foot of the stairs and shook with horror.

After some time, I went into the dining room and had a strong drink. Then I changed into dry clothes, and went upstairs to my writing room. Now that the college had been destroyed, the large front window looked out onto the open land near Horsell. I closed the door behind me to keep the room in darkness. A red fire was burning near Horsell, and dark Martian shapes were moving in front of it. I saw that a train had stopped near Woking Station.

The front of it had crashed and was lying on its side and burning, but the cars at the back were still the right way up and in one piece.

I sat down in my chair and watched. My safe little world was burning before my eyes. I began to put things together in my head. The tripods were machines – similar to our metal trains and ships – that carried the Martians inside them.

Just then, I saw a soldier climb from the street over the low wall into my garden.

“Pssst!” I called through the open window. He looked up but couldn’t see me clearly.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“Do you want to hide?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied.

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In the Storm | Chapter 5

“Then come in,” I said. I went down, unlocked the front door, and opened it. I locked it again after he was inside.

He had no hat, and the buttons of his coat were undone.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They destroyed us,” he answered.

He followed me into the dining room.

“Have some of this,” I said.

I gave him a glass of whisky and he drank it. Then he sat down at the table, put his head in his hands, and cried.

After some time, he became calm again and could answer my questions.

He was a gunner, and had been ordered to attack the Martians near Horsell at about seven. At the same time, the Martians were moving – under the protection of a large metal plate – in the direction of the second cylinder.

This metal plate later stood up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting machines that I had seen. While the other gunners went to make the big gun ready for action, his horse had put its foot in a hole in the ground and fallen on him. At the same time, there had been an explosion from the big gun. Suddenly there was fire everywhere, and all the other gunners and their horses lay dead around him.

“I was scared and my fall had hurt my back. So I lay under my dead horse for a while,” he said. “The smell of burning meat was terrible.”

He had hidden under his horse for hours. When soldiers moved to attack the first cylinder, the first of the tripods stood up. It walked across the open ground, its metal head looking here and there. In one of its arms it carried a strange metal box with shining green lights on it. The heatray came out of this and killed the few soldiers who were running away in front of it.

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The War of the Worlds

In a few minutes, there was nothing alive on the open ground near Horsell. Then the tripod moved towards Woking Station and the handful of houses near it. It used its heat-ray on those and began to move towards the second cylinder. At the same time, the Martians who were left in the great hole near Horsell started building a new tripod.

The gunner had first escaped to Woking, but he found the main street there was closed. There were a few people still alive in the town, but they had been burned by the fires and were terribly scared. He had hidden behind a wall from one of the tripods. He saw this giant chase a man, catch him in one of its metal tentacles, and knock his head against a tall tree. At last, just before midnight, he had found his way to Maybury Hill.

This was the story which the gunner told me slowly, piece by piece. He hadn’t eaten for hours, so I brought cold meat and bread from the kitchen and we ate supper together. We did this in darkness because we didn’t want the Martians to see us. While we ate, the light outside the window slowly changed from black to the gray of early morning.

We went upstairs to my room again and looked out.

Across the valley, now filled with gray smoke, we saw that almost everything had been destroyed by the Martians during the night.

Three of the giant metal tripods were standing around the hole in the ground on the way to Pyrford. When their tops moved this way and that, it seemed that they were looking at everything around them. I thought also that the hole in the ground was bigger.

Clouds of green smoke traveled up from it into the sky.

When the day grew brighter, the soldier and I left the window and went downstairs. We decided that 38

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In the Storm Before the War | Chapter 5 1

we should leave the house at once. He wanted to get to London and I wanted to return to my wife in Leatherhead.

I planned to take her out of England completely.

But between me and Leatherhead was the third cylinder, with its guarding giants. I wanted to take my chances and cross the open country, but the soldier asked me not to.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said.

“You can’t help your wife if you’re dead.” I agreed to travel with him.

He saw this giant chase a man and knock his head against a tall tree.

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Chapter

Weybridge and Shepperton are Destroyed

6

I wanted to leave immediately, but my soldier friend made me look for a bottle of whisky. Then we filled our pockets with cookies and dried meat. After that, we left the house and ran down the road that I had climbed the night before. In the street, we found dead bodies that the heat-ray had burned, together with valuables that people had left: a clock, a silver spoon, an open money box.

Except for the Children’s Home – which was still burning – most of the buildings had escaped from the worst of the heat-ray. But we did not see anybody else on Maybury Hill. Probably most of them had escaped, or were hiding.

We went past the dead landlord, and entered the forest at the foot of the hill. We walked through it to the railroad without meeting anybody. Everything was quiet among the trees that the heat-ray had blackened. Even the birds were silent. From time to time, the gunner and I spoke quietly and looked over our shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen.

When we arrived at the road, we saw three men on horses.

They were riding slowly towards Woking. One was an army 40

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officer. The others were simple soldiers. We called to them and they stopped while we hurried over.

“You’re the first people I’ve seen who are coming this way today,” said the officer. “What’s happening?”

The gunner explained, “Our gun was destroyed last night.

I’ve been hiding. I’m on my way to my old army offices in London. You’ll meet the Martians about a kilometer along this road.”

“What are they like?” asked the officer.

“Giants that are protected by metal plates. They’re thirty meters high, with three legs, a silvery body, and a great head. They carry a box that shoots fire. It kills you when it hits you.”

“Do you mean a gun?”

“No,” the gunner replied. He explained about the Martians’ heat-ray.

The officer asked me. “Did you see this?”

“It’s perfectly true,” I answered.

“I see. Well then I suppose I must see it, too.”

He said to the gunner, “We’re going to clear people out of their houses. Go and report to General Marvin and tell him everything you know. He’s at Weybridge. Do you know the way?”

“I do,” I said.

The officer said goodbye. Then he and the two soldiers rode south. The gunner and I walked to the north. We passed a woman and two children emptying the little house of a farm worker. They were busy with this and didn’t speak to us.

Several farm carts were moving slowly along the road. Then we saw – through the gate of a field – six big guns. They were pointing in the direction of Woking.

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The War of the Worlds

“They’ll get one good shot, at least,” said the gunner. “But let’s continue to Weybridge.”

Further down the road we saw more soldiers and more guns.

The soldiers were building a wall of rocks in front of the guns.

“It’s toy guns against lightning,” said the gunner. “They haven’t seen that heat-ray.”

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Weybridge and Shepperton are Destroyed | Chapter 6

From time to time, the officers looked nervously over the tops of the trees to the south.

The village of Byfleet was very busy. Soldiers – some on horses and some on foot – were collecting people from their houses.

They were taking them to black government carts and an old bus which were waiting for them in the middle of the street.

The soldiers had great difficulty making people understand the need to leave quickly. One old man wanted to take some flower pots full of expensive plants with him. He was arguing with the officer who wanted to leave them behind.

He wanted to take some expensive plants with him.

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The War of the Worlds

I took the old man’s arm and pointed south. “Do you know what’s over there?” I asked. “Death is coming!”

I left him to think about that and walked away with the gunner. At the corner, I looked back. The soldier had left the old man who was still standing with his pots, looking south.

At Weybridge, nobody knew the address of General Marvin’s offices. People were running here and there in their Sunday clothes. Carts, cabs, and buses filled the streets. The gunner and I ate our lunch – the food we had brought with us in our pockets. It wasn’t bad. Soldiers here, too, were warning people, “Leave now, or hide in your houses when we start fighting.”

At the station, large crowds of people were waiting – with boxes and bags – to leave by train. But most of the trains had been stopped, I believe, and only army trains were running – taking soldiers and big guns to Chertsey.

Just after lunch, the gunner and I found ourselves at the place where the River Thames and the River Wey meet. The town of Weybridge stands on one side of the water. On the other side is the village of Shepperton. Lots of boats were crossing the water, taking people from Weybridge across to Shepperton in the north.

While we waited there, we heard the noise of a large gun.

The sound came from Chertsey in the south. The army was starting to shoot at the Martians. Guns over the other side of the river began shooting, too. One woman screamed. Another woman close to me said, “The soldiers will stop them.” But she seemed unsure. Smoke went up into the sky over the trees.

Suddenly there was a loud explosion far up the river, and the ground shook. Some windows in the houses near us broke suddenly.

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“There they are!” shouted a man in a blue sweater. He was pointing towards Chertsey.

Quickly, one after the other, four Martian tripods appeared in the distance. They moved quickly to the river. A fifth tripod arrived from another direction. They were coming towards us. Their metal bodies shone in the sunlight while they moved towards the guns. One of the tripods on the left held a box high in the air. The ghostly, terrible heat-ray was sent towards Chertsey and hit the town.

The people by the river were filled with horror. At first, there was no shouting or screaming. Everybody was silent. Then they began to run away noisily from the water’s edge. But I was thinking about the heat-ray and I shouted, “Get under the water!” Nobody listened.

I ran across the rocky beach and into the river. After about six meters the water still only came up to my middle. The nearest tripod was now two hundred meters away from me. I threw myself under the water. People in the boats around me began doing the same.

The tripod continued to walk towards the guns. We humans were little insects for the Martians. When I needed to breathe, I lifted my head up out of the water. I saw the tripod climb out of the river close to the village of Shepperton. It was lifting the heat-ray box in the air and getting ready to attack.

Just then, there were six explosions from the big guns near the village. One of these hit the tripod’s silver head, which broke open in a cloud of red meat and metal.

The Martian inside it was dead, but the tripod did not fall. The machine continued moving towards Shepperton church. It crashed into the church building, fell to one side, and then landed heavily in the river.

I looked towards Chertsey and saw that the four other Martian tripods were now walking towards the tripod that 45

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had fallen. They were holding their heat-ray boxes high in the air and sending the terrible rays in all directions – at the guns, at the village of Shepperton, and at the town of Weybridge.

Houses fell, trees were burned, people were screaming and dying in the white fire that came from the box. The river became terribly hot when the Martian heat-ray hit it. A big wave of burning water started moving towards me. I swam quickly towards the nearest river bank – between the Thames and the Wey – and threw myself out of the river and onto the beach there. The giant Martian tripods were very close to me, and I expected death at any minute. The large foot of one of them came down heavily on the rocks about twenty meters from my head. But then it lifted again. After that, I saw the four tripods with Martians in them, carrying the tripod which had been hit and was now empty. They took the giant metal body far away across rivers and fields. It was only then that I realized that I had escaped!

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Chapter

7

The Martians Reach London

The Martians, it seemed, had gone back to the first cylinder’s landing place on the open ground near Horsell. They were in no hurry. Night after night, new cylinders were arriving from Mars.

Day after day, soldiers and heavy guns were brought to London to protect the city from the Martian attack.

I found a small, empty boat in the river and got into it. I took this down the river from Weybridge – with most of its houses now on fire – to Walton-onThames. I got onto dry land there and slept for a while under some trees. When I woke, I felt thirsty. I opened my eyes and saw a priest near me. “Do you have any water?” I asked. He shook his head.

“What’s happening?” he asked. “Is God angry? Who are these Martians? Why did they destroy the church in Weybridge? We’d just repaired it.”

“Look, things are different now,” I said.

“But there’s still hope.”

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“What do you mean? These Martians don’t feel sorry for their actions and they can’t be killed.”

“That’s not true,” I answered. “One of them was killed by our guns in the attack on Weybridge. And we don’t know if they feel sorry or not.”

Suddenly we heard new explosions to the south.

“Listen. We’re in the middle of things here,” I said. “Let’s go north – to London.”

My brother was studying to be a doctor in London when the Martians landed on Earth. He read the early newspaper reports, and was not worried for me or my wife at first.

It seemed clear that the Martians could not leave their hole in the ground near Horsell, and my house was three kilometers away.

But when he decided – late on Saturday – to visit me in Woking, he found that the usual train was not running. The next day some Sunday newspapers carried the story of the Martian attack on Woking, but the journalists did not report the full horror of it. My brother still could not buy a ticket to Woking, although he returned to Waterloo Station for one.

Nobody at the station could tell him why trains to the southwest had been stopped.

It was only on Monday afternoon, when my brother returned to Waterloo to ask about the next Woking train, that he learned from a London evening paper about the attack on Weybridge.

He was greatly worried by the report, which described the giant metal creatures, thirty meters high, that the Martians traveled in. The newspaper also talked about the Martian heat-ray and the terrible results when it was used.

My brother went to Victoria Station to learn more. He found crowds of refugees from the south-west there, and 48

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The Martians Reach London | Chapter 7

he asked them a lot of questions, but he heard no news of me. He was very worried when he went home to his apartment in north London.

That night, shouts in the street woke him. The police were warning people about a new danger: “Black smoke!� they cried. My brother discovered more from an early morning paper. The Martians were now attacking with gas missiles.

When these hit the ground, thick black smoke came out and anybody who breathed it died immediately. The army could do nothing about the smoke, and the police wanted everybody to leave London. The Martians were moving towards London with the help of this black smoke, and they were destroying everything in their way.

When my brother learned this, he ran to his room, put all his money into his pockets, and returned to the streets.

The priest was with me when we saw the Martian tripods move towards London. They attacked the lines of big guns that stood in their way. In the first attack, a tripod was hit by an explosion. One of its legs broke, and it fell quickly to the ground. The other metal giants immediately destroyed the guns in front of them with their heat-rays.

After this, the standing tripods made a circle around the tripod which had fallen. They protected it from human attack while the Martian inside it got out and repaired the leg which had been broken. After this, the Martians left nothing to chance. They used the heat-ray on any guns that they saw. When they could not see any guns, they sent missiles before them which broke open and gave out a thick black smoke that covered everything. This killed any soldiers who were hiding with guns behind trees. In this way, the Martians entered the town of Richmond, southwest of London.

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That night, the priest and I saw the fourth Martian cylinder fall to Earth. The population of London was getting ready to run from the Martians. Nobody wanted to fight them now.

At first my brother went north on a bike which he took from a cycling store. The store’s window had been broken by thieves. But at Edgware, the bike’s wheel broke so he had to stop cycling and start walking. There were large crowds on the main road, so he decided to walk down a narrow side road that went east instead. He was hoping to reach the house of a friend who lived in a country town to the north-east of London.

It was in this side road that my brother found three men trying to steal a horse and cart from the two ladies who were sitting in it. The shorter woman in white was screaming. The taller, thinner, darker woman was angrily hitting the arm of the man who held her. My brother, who was good at sports, shouted at the thieves and ran over to rescue the women.

He knocked one of the thieves to the floor and the man who had been holding the horse’s head started running away. The horse and cart – with the two women in it – began moving off. My brother ran after it. Just then, the dark young woman pulled out a small gun from under her seat. She jumped down, ran back to my brother and shot at the thieves. Then she gave her gun to my brother and returned to the cart. The three criminals ran off.

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After that, my brother walked over to the cart. “Can I travel with you in the empty seat?” he asked.

“Of course,” the two women answered, and he got up beside them.

As they drove on, my brother learned that one woman was the wife, and the other was the sister, of a doctor from northwest London. This doctor had heard news of the Martian attacks very early that morning. He had put food, drink, and a gun in the cart and had sent his wife and sister east to Edgware. He had promised to join them two hours later, but it was now nine o’clock and they had seen nothing of him.

On the road, they met crowds of refugees.

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My brother promised to stay with the two ladies. He suggested traveling to Harwich on the east coast of England and leaving the country by ship. Mrs. Elphinstone, the doctor’s wife, was worried about her husband, George, and she called out his name a few times when she heard of this plan. But Miss Elphinstone, the doctor’s sister, agreed to it. They rode slowly north-east to Barnet. After a while my brother got down and walked next to the cart, to save the horse from getting too tired.

On the road, they met crowds of refugees who were coming from Barnet towards them. They were clearly frightened and were shouting, “The Martians are coming!” The town of Barnet, which my brother could see now in the distance, was covered by thick gray smoke, and several of its buildings were on fire.

“Where are you taking us?” Mrs. Elphinstone cried.

When they reached Barnet, they found a great river of people already on the Great North Road. These crowds were escaping from London and hoped to find safety in the north of England. My brother and the two Elphinstone ladies saw many sad and terrible things in the crowd. A girl could not continue walking and was crying, a mother was looking for her child, a man was talking angrily to himself, an old lord who had been badly burned was dying by the road.

A rich man died before my brother’s eyes when his box of gold coins broke open and fell under the wheels of a cart. My brother wanted to rescue him, but he could do nothing when the cart went over the man’s back and broke it.

“We must cross the Great North Road and continue traveling east,” my brother told Miss Elphinstone. “I’ll walk in front and stop the traffic. You drive us across.”

Miss Elphinstone started driving the cart over the road, but the river of people was too strong. The cart began to move 52

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north, so my brother jumped up into the driver’s seat.

“I’ll drive,” he said. “Point your gun at the man behind if he pushes against us too hard. No, better, point your gun at his horse.”

Miss Elphinstone held the gun ready and obeyed my brother. Poor Mrs. Elphinstone couldn’t even call out “George” any more – she was too frightened.

Slowly my brother drove the cart towards the right as they were pushed north along the wide road. At last, about a kilometer and a half from the town center, they left the Great North Road and continued along a smaller road which went east.

From a hill in East Barnet, they saw two trains – completely full of people – which were traveling north along the railroad to Scotland.

My brother said to Miss Elphinstone, “I’m sure that all those extra passengers got on after the train left London. The angry terror of the population in the city has made King’s Cross and the other stations in the center impossible.”

They stopped near that hill for the afternoon. The wild events of the day had made all three of them feel exhausted – but they couldn’t sleep. In the end, they started to feel hungry and cold. They also felt nervous when – that evening – large crowds of refugees from the east of England hurried past their stopping place and continued west along the road that they had used to get there.

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Chapter

Escaping from Prison

8

On Monday, the Martians sent gas missiles into different parts of central and south London. Once dark smoke clouds had covered everything, and everybody had died, the Martians cleared the streets with hot air guns. They damaged our railroads and destroyed our army. They cut our electricity lines and stopped us from sending messages. It seemed that they wanted to frighten us, to make us obey them.

Before lunch, hundreds of people were down by the Thames. They were hurrying onto crowded river boats, hoping to escape. But the Martians shot a gas missile into the middle of them.

After lunch, a Martian tripod passed Big Ben. It walked down the river to check on the boats, sailors, and passengers that had been hit by the gas. All the boats had crashed and broken into little pieces. Everybody who had been on them was dead.

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I’ll tell you about the fifth cylinder in a minute, but the sixth fell on Monday evening in south-west London. My brother, with Miss and Mrs. Elphinstone, saw the green light in the sky from a field in the east of England. The next day they continued east. On Tuesday evening, Miss Elphinstone saw the seventh green star fall. It landed in north London.

They drove to the town of Chelmsford the day after.

Refugees all over England were now very hungry and had started stealing food from stores and farms. In Chelmsford, local government people ordered my brother and his lady friends to give their horse away for food. They didn’t offer the Elphinstones any money for it, only a plate of cooked horsemeat the following day.

My brother learned that the Martians had taken all of London and that half the British government had moved north, to the city of Birmingham. He decided, after discussing things with Miss and Mrs. Elphinstone, that they should continue to the east coast. By the middle of the day they had reached the sea.

There were many boats in the water – fishing boats from England, Scotland, France, and Holland, together with Thames river boats and private sailing boats. There was even a great fighting ship – Thunder Child – out in the deeper water.

My brother bought three seats – for himself and the Elphinstone ladies – on a small ship that was sailing to Belgium that afternoon. Shortly before they left, they heard shooting in the distance. The captain took the ship out to sea immediately.

They had not gone far when my brother saw a huge Martian tripod walking through the sea towards them. It was followed by another. The Martians clearly wanted to stop any ships leaving.

Just then, Thunder Child passed my brother’s ship. It was traveling fast towards the Martians but not shooting at them. This probably saved it for a while because the Martians didn’t realize that it was a warship, and they didn’t use the heat-ray on it.

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When Thunder Child got near, one of the Martians shot a gas missile at it, but this just hit the side of the ship and fell into the sea behind it.

The Martians began hurrying away from Thunder Child and towards the beach. One pointed the heat-ray down and heated the sea with it. Then the guns of Thunder Child sounded and the nearest Martian was badly hit. It fell with a watery crash into the sea.

My brother and other refugees on the small ship with him shouted happily: “One!” The second Martian lifted its heat-ray box and pointed it at Thunder Child. But the ship was so near that the explosion seriously damaged the Martian. It also fell heavily under the waves and never came up.

“Two!” shouted my brother and the Elphinstone ladies.

All the refugees on the boats around them shouted happily, too.

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Then the captain moved the ship that my brother was on out into the open sea. Another Martian was walking through the water close to the beach, and other fighting ships were coming nearer. But the white clouds that rose from the hot sea, and the black smoke that came from the gas, hid events from the watchers, although they heard the guns.

Just then, Thunder Child passed my brother’s ship.

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The priest and I stayed for two days in an empty house in the village of Halliford. We hid to escape the black smoke. While we were there, I worried about my wife in Leatherhead. The priest spoke selfishly of how bad he felt, so I kept away from him as much as possible. At lunch time on our second day in the house, a Martian cleared the black smoke from the streets with a hot air gun. I decided to leave. At first, the priest didn’t want to go. “It’s safe here,” he repeated. I filled my pockets with food before I went. In the end, when I was saying goodbye, the priest decided to leave with me. Soon we arrived in Richmond and crossed the bridge over the Thames. I noticed many red plants in the water, but couldn’t study them – there was no time. Later we saw a Martian tripod which was chasing three humans through the streets. The priest and I hid and watched. Once the Martian had caught the people, it threw them into the metal basket on its back. This was strange. I had thought that the Martians only wanted to fight and destroy humans.

The priest and I continued walking, hiding from the Martians when necessary. In the end, the priest became hungry and thirsty – so we broke into an empty house in Mortlake.

In a small back room off the kitchen we found beef, bread, cookies, vegetables, fish, beer, wine, and soup. Just before midnight, we were eating in darkness at the kitchen table when the window was lit by a sudden bright green light, there was a crash, and the house shook wildly. I was thrown from my chair and hit my head on the stove door.

Everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, it was early the next morning. The priest was with me. I thought about the night before, and realized that we had seen – and felt – the moment when the fifth cylinder from Mars had crashed into the ground.

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It had destroyed most of the house we were in. When I looked through a big crack in the kitchen wall, I could see a tripod. It was guarding the cylinder while it cooled.

I moved quietly into a dark room off the kitchen and the priest followed. We slept a little more.

Later, the priest and I went back into the kitchen and ate. I watched through the crack after the cylinder was opened and a little machine with five legs and three arms started unpacking it. It handled the metal plates, rods, and bars that came from the cylinder very carefully, putting them in order on the ground. A Martian was sitting on top and using its tentacles to make the five-legged “handling” machine move.

A machine noise filled my ears, and clouds of green smoke went up into the sky while I watched.

I studied the nearest of the Martians in the hole around the cylinder. It was mainly a big head with large eyes and it had sixteen tentacles around its mouth, eight on each side. It also had one ear on the back of its head. I realized with surprise that Martians had no stomachs. I found out later this was because they lived on blood taken from living animals – even humans – and that they injected this blood straight into their own bodies.

When a second tripod arrived at the cylinder’s landing place, the priest and I hid once more in the dark back room.

The priest’s selfish behavior had driven me crazy in the house in Halliford, but now it was even worse. He cried for hours and he ate a lot, although I told him we needed to be careful with our food. I had realized that we could only escape when the Martians finished their work outside our hiding place and moved away.

When I looked through the crack in the kitchen wall, I saw that three new tripods had arrived. The Martians who had traveled in them were now helping those who had come from the fifth cylinder. They brought new machines 59

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with them. One was making metal bars from the wet ground around the capsule. It left a little mountain of bluish dust at the bottom of the hole while it worked.

Later that day, the priest was watching through the crack in the wall when the first humans were brought to the hole in the ground. He fell back in horror and I looked through the crack in his place. What had shocked him? I wanted to see for myself. I saw one of the giant tripods was close to the ground and I heard human voices over the noise of the machines.

Suddenly the Martian in the tripod reached one of its metal tentacles behind it. It pulled a man from the basket on its back – he was fat and red-faced – and lifted him over the blue dust mountain. Immediately, I heard the man’s screams and the excited noises of the Martians who were on the far side of the mountain of dust. I ran to the dark back room with my hands over my ears. It was on the next day that I saw the Martians kill a boy and inject his blood into themselves.

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I was very scared of the Martians by now, and I never thought that humans could possibly make them move away from our hiding place. But late on the fifth night, when the moon was shining brightly, I saw through the crack in the wall that – although the metal-making machine and handling machine were there – the tripods had gone. Suddenly I heard the noise of heavy guns. There were six explosions, then a long silence, then six more explosions. That was all.

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Chapter

A Free Man

9

On our sixth day in the house, I woke up alone in the kitchen. I found the priest in the back room with the food and drink. I pulled a bottle of wine from his hand. We fought, and the bottle fell and broke on the floor. I put the food that we had in ten parts. “We have food for ten more days if we’re careful,” I told him. He wanted to eat more, but I stopped him. After that, we were enemies. For a day and a night, he cried and asked me

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repeatedly for more food and I said, “no”. He tried to steal it, and I hit him. He started talking to himself. I realized he was going crazy.

On the eighth and ninth days, he began speaking loudly. “I did wrong and now God will kill me!” he cried in the back room.

“Be quiet! The Martians will hear,” I told him, but he didn’t stop.

“I’ve been quiet too long!” he shouted. He started moving across the kitchen towards the wall that stood between us and the Martians.

I took a meat ax from the wall of the kitchen and went to attack him. In the end, I hit him on the head with the back of the ax. He fell to the floor and was silent. Then I heard something moving outside. I looked through the crack. A Martian with a handling machine was very near. A long metal tentacle came through the hole and started feeling around. I hurried to the back room, and opened the cellar door. I stood by the open door and listened to the noises from the kitchen. I heard the tentacle feeling around in the darkness and then pulling something heavy across the floor.

I looked quietly out into the kitchen. In a triangle of light in the front wall, I saw a Martian holding the priest’s body and looking at his head.

I moved quickly back into the cellar, closed the door behind me, and covered myself with firewood as quietly as I could.

I listened again, and heard the metal tentacle enter the room with the food in it. It moved across the table. Then it opened the cellar door and felt around. I nearly screamed when it touched my boot, but in the end, it took only some firewood to study, then left the cellar and closed the door.

I stayed in the cellar for the whole of the tenth day. I was terribly thirsty but I didn’t want to move from my safe hiding place. In the end, on the eleventh day, I came out. I discovered that the Martian had taken all the 63

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food from the back room. But I found some water and drank it. I felt a lot better. No metal tentacle appeared through the door from the kitchen. I was pleased about that. I stayed in the back room for another two days, just to be sure. I drank more water, slept, and dreamed of the priest’s death and of eating a large dinner. Although I was still scared, I couldn’t hear any noises from the Martian machines outside. On the fourteenth day, I came out into the kitchen. I saw that a strange red Martian plant was growing over the crack in the front wall. It made everything in the room as red as blood.

On the fifteenth day, I was in the kitchen when a dog looked through the crack in the front wall. “I should kill him,” I thought. “I don’t want him to make any noise and bring the Martians. Afterwards, maybe I can eat him.”

But when I said, “Good dog!” very softly and moved towards him, he ran off. Everything was quiet outside, so in the end I looked out of the crack in the wall.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the machines had gone.

There were blue dust and metal bars everywhere. There were the bones of humans that the Martians had killed for their blood, and some black birds were picking small pieces of meat off these. These were the only things left in the empty hole in the ground.

I pushed myself through the crack in the kitchen wall and stood in the open air. Now was my chance to escape.

I climbed up a mountain of trash on one side of the great hole, then stood at the top and looked around. I saw no Martians, and no living humans. The street in Mortlake that I remembered walking through two weeks before was now destroyed. The red Martian plant grew everywhere, but I was free!

I walked away from the land around my prison. I dug up carrots and potatoes from old vegetable gardens and ate

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those. Then I drank fresh water from a shallow river that I found. The red Martian plant grew very well near water, and I saw that the River Thames was now full of its red leaves.

Because I was still hungry, I put some of those strange leaves in my mouth, but they were watery and tasted of metal; I could not eat them.

I walked on towards Roehampton, and passed a number of houses by the road. Their doors and windows were shut but they were empty and silent. I broke into two of them, looking for food, but found nothing. Other thieves had clearly visited these houses before. The red Martian plant was thinner here.

I rested for many hours under some trees because I was still very weak.

All this time I saw no humans and no Martians. I met two hungry dogs, but they hurried away when I called them. I also found some old bones of cats and a sheep in the forest, but they had no meat on them.

When the sun went down, I got up and continued walking towards Putney. Human civilization was finished, I felt. Was I the last man alive? Maybe the Martians had destroyed all human life in London and were now looking for their food in Berlin or Paris. Or maybe they had gone to the north of England.

I spent that night in the pub that stands at the top of Putney Hill. It was the first time I had slept in a bed since I had driven to Leatherhead. I found a packet of cookies in the kitchen, ate some, and filled my pockets with the others. I lit no light. I didn’t want any Martians to find me. I lay down on the bed, but didn’t sleep much.

In the night, I thought about the priest’s death. I didn’t feel bad about it. He had been selfish since I first met him near Weybridge. He had gone completely crazy at the end, too.

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I also thought about the Martians. Where had they all gone? I had no idea.

Finally, I thought about my dear wife. Was she alive or dead? I just didn’t know.

The next morning was bright and fine. I got up and left the pub very early. The sky in the east was pink and the little clouds in it were gold. I walked down Putney Hill towards Wimbledon.

On the way, I saw a cart with a broken wheel, a summer hat on the ground, and many other things which people had left behind when they were escaping from the Martians.

I thought about going to Leatherhead, but decided not to. I didn’t feel that my chances of finding my wife there were very great. I was sure that my cousins had taken her away when the news of the Martian attack on Woking first reached them. Or had death reached them first?

I wanted to find my wife. I missed her. My heart ached for her and for the world of men. But where should I look? I had no clear idea. I also felt terribly lonely. I walked, under the cover of some trees, to the edge of the open ground at Wimbledon. None of the red Martian plants grew here. Just then, the sun came up and the place shone green and yellow in its light.

When I began walking across the open ground, I felt someone’s eyes on my back. I looked behind me. Somebody was hiding among a group of trees and watching me. I changed direction and began walking towards him. Just then, he stepped out from among the trees and I saw that he was carrying a sword. I continued walking towards him. He stood there silently and looked at me.

When I got near, I saw that his clothes were dusty and dirty.

His yellow hair fell over his eyes, and his face was whitish, thin and dirty. I did not recognize him at first. I walked towards him slowly and carefully.

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All this time I saw no humans and no Martians.

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“Stop!” he cried when I was less than ten meters away.

I stopped. “Where do you come from?” he asked.

“From Mortlake,” I answered. “I was caught in a house near the hole that a Martian cylinder made. I escaped after two weeks.”

“There’s no food here,” said the man with the sword. “This is my country – from this hill to the river, from there to Clapham and up to the edge of the open land over there. There’s only enough food for one person. Which way are you going?”

I replied slowly, “I don’t want to stay. I think I’ll go to Leatherhead – because my wife was there.”

He looked at me in an unsure way. Then his face brightened.

He pointed at me. “It’s you,” he said, “the man from Woking.

You weren’t killed at Weybridge!”

I recognized him at the same moment.

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“You’re the gunner who came into my garden on Maybury Hill!” I said.

“That’s right. Good job!” he said. “We’re two lucky men!”

He offered me his hand and I shook it.

“I escaped up a drain,” he explained. “They didn’t kill everybody. And afterwards, they went away. But that was only sixteen days ago – and your hair’s gray now!”

Suddenly one of the black birds that was walking hungrily across the open ground gave an ugly cry.

“Let’s hide,” said the gunner.

He offered me his hand and I shook it.

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Chapter

10

Dead or Alive?

I followed the gunner under some trees, and asked, “Have you seen any Martians? Since I escaped…”

“They’ve crossed the city,” he replied.

“You can see their lights at night in north London. They have a big camp there.

There haven’t been any here for five days!”

“Right,” I said.

“I saw lights in the sky two nights ago,” he continued.

“I believe they were testing a new flying-machine.”

“If they can fly, our civilization’s finished,” I said.

“It’s finished already,” said the gunner.

I remembered my time with Ogilvy the astronomer. “But they sent only ten missiles,” I explained, “at least until the first cylinder arrived.”

“How do you know?” the gunner asked. I told him about Ogilvy.

“Probably the missile-gun on Mars failed,” I added.

“They’ll fix it,” said the gunner. “Or maybe this is just the first wave. They’ve come to check Earth. They’ll send a report to Mars and more will come.”

I listened while he continued.

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“Everybody here ran away from the Martians. Then they fought each other for food. I decided to stay near the Martians. Mice stay near humans and live off the small pieces of food that fall from their tables. We must do the same with the Martians.”

I was interested in the gunner’s ideas. “But what about the future?” I asked.

“Well,” he answered, “the Martians will destroy our army and guns, our railroads and ships, our towns and cities. Then – when all that’s gone – they’ll catch us and keep us on farms, give us food and drink, match us with suitable partners.

They’ll collect and keep our children. We’re their food after all.”

“So what will humans do?” I asked.

“Some will like the easy life. They’ll enjoy the free bed and food. Some may get close to Martians and live in their homes – similar to our cats and dogs. Maybe some will agree to catch wild humans for the Martians.”

“Surely not.”

“Of course they will. Don’t be stupid! But I’m planning something different.”

“What?” I asked.

“I plan to live under the city in drains, railroad tunnels, and cellars – with a group of clean-thinking, healthy men. We’ll have clean-thinking, healthy women, too – to be mothers and teachers. We won’t accept anybody weak or stupid. People who aren’t useful must be killed. We’ll build great libraries below ground. We must take serious science books and models from the London museums to study and to increase our knowledge.

We must learn from the Martians, too. Maybe some of us can get caught and live with them to discover more about them.

Just think. Perhaps one day a group of us can learn to use the Martians’ fighting-machines and steal some, and attack the creatures with those. That’ll surprise them – eh?”

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I wondered about staying and working towards the gunner’s dream. We began digging from the cellar of his house towards the nearest local drain. After a short while, he said, “Let’s go onto the roof and check. If any Martians are near, they’ll probably hear us working!”

I realized then the truth about the gunner. He had big plans but was in no hurry. We saw no Martian tripods from the roof. The River Thames was completely covered with red Martian plant leaves, I noticed. After that, we went back to the cellar and ate supper together. The gunner produced some expensive French wine and we smoked and played cards after we finished eating.

Later, I went up to the roof alone and looked at the green lights of the Martians’ new camp in north London. I remembered my wife and forgot the gunner with his drink, his food, his card games, and his unreal dreams. I decided to continue into London and to learn about the latest events there.

I said goodbye to the gunner and walked into the city. There were many dead people in the streets.

They had been killed by the Martians’ black smoke, which was now just black dust on the ground and no longer dangerous. The big city, usually noisy and busy, was silent and still.

We went back to the cellar and ate supper together.

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Dead or Alive? | Chapter 10

It was in South Kensington that I heard the strange cry of a Martian. “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!� it went. I followed the noise through the empty streets. Again, I passed many dead people, together with a bus on its side, and the bones of a horse which had been picked clean by dogs.

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The War of the Worlds

After a time, I arrived in Oxford Street. I was hot and thirsty after my long walk, so I broke into a pub and ate and drank something. Then I went into the room behind the bar and slept on the hard, black sofa.

When I woke, I could still hear the loud cries, “Ulla! Ulla!

Ulla!” I followed these to the top of Baker Street and finally saw the Martian in the tripod who was making the strange sound. He was standing perfectly still in his machine. Its cover was open, and he was shouting at the top of his voice.

What was wrong with him? I moved no closer but walked around the tripod and away.

I was walking down a side street when I saw a dog with a big piece of red meat in its mouth. It was running away from some dogs that were chasing it. Further down the street, I found an empty Martian handling machine. It was dark so I didn’t see the blood on the seat or the pieces of tough meat the dogs had left behind. The red Martian plant which covered the ground around it seemed to be dying.

There was a second tripod in Regent’s Park, but it was still and silent. Just then, while I was crossing the bridge over the canal, the cries of “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!” stopped. London became deathly quiet. I felt lonely and scared. I ran far to the west and spent the night in an empty house. The next morning, I felt stronger and went back.

When I saw the third tripod on Primrose Hill, I decided to walk towards it and end my life. But when I got closer, I saw that the tripod was open, and black birds were picking at the dead, brownish-grey body inside it.

Excitedly, I walked up the hill to the giant Martian camp.

I was not scared. When I entered it, I saw the dead bodies of Martians everywhere. Some were on the ground, some in tripods, and some on handling machines. “How has this happened?” I wondered.

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Dead or Alive? | Chapter 10

Then I understood. The Martians had caught one of Earth’s many diseases. Perhaps it was just a cough (something which does not seriously hurt humans who have lived here all their lives), but this disease – because it was completely new for creatures from Mars – had killed them all.

I looked around at London. It seemed unusually beautiful under the clear blue sky. The dark shadow over humanity had disappeared. There was hope after all. Tears came to my eyes while I lifted my hands to the sky and cried, “Thank God!” And then I thought of my wife and the sweetness of the old life that we had shared – a life that was impossible now.

The news of the death of the Martians traveled fast – to Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham. Church bells rang out the happy story all over England.

But what about me? For three days, I couldn’t think straight. I sang crazy songs and walked the London streets until some kind people took me in and looked after me. In the end, I got better.

But then the people who had helped me told me that Leatherhead had been destroyed by one of the Martians. I stayed four extra days with those good people, a very sad and lonely man.

When I felt strong enough, I decided to visit my old house in Maybury Hill. I wanted to see the home that I had shared with my dear wife. When I reached Waterloo, I found that the government had organized free trains for people who needed them. Through the train window, I watched London pass before me. Londoners were busily tidying, clearing, cleaning, fixing, repairing, and building everywhere.

At last I arrived at Woking Station and walked to my house.

I went through the forest which was full of the red Martian leaves, although here, too, they were dying. I passed the College Arms pub. The landlord’s body had been taken from the street and was now lying peacefully in the ground next to the old church.

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Then I saw my old house. The front door had been broken open, and the upstairs window had not been closed since I had looked through it with the gunner nearly four weeks earlier.

I went inside. The house felt empty. I walked into the dining room. There was dry meat and bread on the table, and an empty bottle of beer. The gunner and I had left them weeks before and nobody had touched them.

Then, strangely, I heard a man’s voice. It said, “It’s no use.

Nobody’s lived here for weeks. Don’t stay and feel worse.

You’re the only one who escaped.”

Were these my own thoughts?

Then I noticed the glass doors to the garden. They were open. I stepped through them and found my cousin and my wife. They were standing outside.

My wife saw me, and her face went white.

“Herbert!” she cried, and then her eyes closed and she began to fall.

I caught her in my arms.

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The Martians have never attacked Earth again. Some astronomers who watch the planet Venus believe that the Martians have landed there instead.

Humans have learned a lot about science from their studies of the different Martian machines. Perhaps the most interesting of all is their flying-machine, which has helped us to understand the science of flight.

I still remember all my strange adventures during the War of the Worlds. But the strangest and most wonderful thing of all for me was to find my wife alive and well when I believed her – and she believed me – to be dead.

I caught her in my arms.

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WHILE READING ACTIVITIES

Read Chapters 1–3.

1

Put these sentences in the correct order. Number them 1 through 13. a. The Martians kill the group

with the white flag using their heat-ray.

b. The narrator goes to see the

cylinder and finds a crowd around it.

c. The cylinder opens and a Martian comes out.

It moves slowly.

d. A group of people with a white

flag go to speak with the Martians.

e. The crowd and narrator run off,

leaving a store-worker in the hole.

f. Ogilvy asks Henderson the

journalist to come and look at the cylinder.

g. The narrator meets people on

his way home who behave as usual.

h. The Martians start to send missiles

towards Earth.

i. The Martians study Earth and get ready to attack it. 1 j. The narrator has a cigarette

and calmly tells his wife, “Don’t worry!”

k. The first Martian missile arrives

and Ogilvy finds it near Horsell.

l. Stent gives orders to men

digging in the hole around the cylinder.

m. The narrator has some wine

and tells his wife all he saw and heard.

Read Chapters 4–6.

2

Correct these false sentences.

1. The second cylinder falls to the south-west of the town

of Woking.

The second cylinder falls to the north of the town of Woking.

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2. The Martians partly destroy the hospital across from the

narrator’s house.

3. The narrator plans to take his wife to stay with his sisters in

Leatherhead.

4. A storm begins when the narrator arrives at the top of

Maybury Hill.

5. The gunner escapes death from the Martian heat-ray when

his friend falls on him.

6. On the road, they meet three soldiers on bikes who send

them to Weybridge.

7. The guns near Shepperton kill none of the Martians.

8. The narrator gets into the lake and goes under the water to

escape the heat-ray.

9. The narrator almost dies at the water’s edge under the large

hand of one of the tripods.

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WHILE READING ACTIVITIES

Read Chapters 7 and 8.

3

Check the correct answers.

1. Which sentence is not true about the narrator? a.

He asks the priest for water. b.

He decides to go north – to London. c.

He sees the Martians kill a boy. d.

He attacks the Martians. ü

2. Which sentence is not true about the priest? a.

He sees the fourth Martian cylinder fall to Earth. b.

He is generous and always thinks of others. c.

He hides in a house in the village of

Halliford to escape from the black smoke. d.

The fifth cylinder falls next to

the house that he is hiding in with the narrator.

3. Which sentence is not true about the narrator’s brother? a.

He was studying to be a doctor

when the Martians landed on Earth. b.

He tries but fails to visit the narrator in Woking. c.

He rescues two ladies from some thieves in the street. d.

He drives over a rich man’s

back and kills him by accident.

4. Which sentence is not true about Miss Elphinstone? a.

She is always talking about her husband, “George”. b.

She pulls a gun from under her seat

and shoots at thieves in the street. c.

She drives the cart across the Great North Road. d.

She points her gun at a horse in the road behind her.

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Read Chapters 9 and 10.

4

Are these sentences true or false? Write T or F. 1. The narrator knocks the priest on

the head with the back of a meat ax. T

2. The narrator hides under the food in the cellar.

3. On the fifteenth day, the narrator goes

outside and finds the Martians are gone.

4. The leaves of the red Martian plant taste good.

5. At Wimbledon, the narrator meets the

milkman who visited him in Maybury Hill.

6. The gunner talks a lot about his plans,

but he is lazy about working towards them.

7. The narrator leaves the gunner’s house

and travels to the center of Leatherhead.

8. The narrator finds that all the Martians,

and the red Martian plants, are dying.

9. The narrator goes back to visit his old house.

10. The Martians don’t attack Earth again,

but humans learn a lot from their machines.

5

Match the definitions with the words from the box. ax bone camp cellar drain firewood sword 1. This is a dark room under a house. You can keep things

there.

cellar

2. This is a place where people stay for a short time.

3. This is cut into small pieces, ready to use. You burn it on a

fire.

4. This is made of metal. You can cut meat or wood with it.

5. You can fight with this long knife.

6. You can find this hard, white thing inside an animal’s body.

7. This tunnel takes away waste water from toilets under a city.

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AFTER READING ACTIVITIES

1

2

There are eight words from the story in this word box. Can you find them all?

J

W

L

E

O

Y

I

W

M

Q

O

O

R

M

V

P

A

V

X

C

R

E

A

T

U

R

E

B

Q

D

U

R

S

S

B

X

U

G

O

L

T

S

P

S

P

M

I

S

S

I

L

E

W

L

U

N

S

R

A

Y

P

J

O

M

Q

B

O

N

I

F

O

S

I

Q

A

D

Z

B

Q

H

I

U

T

Z

R

V

H

G

P

O

E

K

I

B

S

G

T

V

N

Use the words in Activity 1 to complete these sentences.

1. The narrator spoke to  

Lord

 

Hilton about the crowd

of people around the hole.

2. People were scared when the first

came out of

the cylinder.

3. It was a strange

with brown-gray skin, large

eyes, and a V-shaped mouth.

4. The attackers from Mars planned their

with

Earth over many years.

5. At midnight on May 12th there was an

on Mars.

6. Every night, for ten nights, a

was sent

towards Earth.

7. The dark heat-

killed people, and burned trees

and houses.

8. The mirror on top of the

moved round

and round.

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3

Correct nine mistakes in this newspaper story.

MESSAGE FROM MARS AMAZING STORY FROM WOKING

green Last night, people in the town of Woking saw a blue star fall from the sky and they thought that it was perhaps a meteorite.

In fact, it was a missile from the planet Venus, and it landed on open water near the village of Horsell. Mr. Ogilvy, a local detective, discovered the thing in the early hours of this morning and hurried into Horsell to tell others about it. It is heart-shaped and it is made of wood. It is thirty centimeters long and it has music coming from inside it. What message does this strange missile bring to the people of Mercury?

4

Complete the summary of part of Chapters 7 and 8. Use the correct form of the verbs from the box. break clear destroy escape have land move notice protect repair see think use walk watch walking

While they are

to London, the narrator and the

a tripod which is hit by an explosion. One of its

priest

and it falls to the ground. The Martian inside gets

legs

the leg while other tripods make a circle around

out and

it. After that, the Martians use their heat-ray to

it to

any human guns that they can see. When they can’t see any guns, they

gas missiles to kill all the humans

the streets of black in front of them. Afterwards, they smoke with a hot air gun. The narrator and the priest stay for two days in an empty house in the village of Halliford. The narrator about his wife in Leatherhead and keeps away from the priest. When the streets are clear, they Here the narrator

to Richmond.

red Martian plants in the river. They

go on to Mortlake and break into an empty house which a lot of food in it. That night, the fifth Martian cylinder next to the house. The narrator and the priest are now prisoners.

They secretly

the Martians unpack the fifth cylinder,

and catch and kill humans, but they cannot

.

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AFTER READING ACTIVITIES

5

Who says this? Match the sentences with the speakers.

1. “The army’s watching them,” h 2. “It’s sad that they’re not more friendly,” 3. “Nobody can go through this bridge any longer,” 4. “But where can we go?”

5. “You’ll be safe for the moment,” 6. “What’s the hurry?”

7. “Aloo! Aloo!”

8. “The smell of burning meat was terrible,” 9. “We’re going to clear people out of their houses,” 10. “Death is coming!”

11. “There they are!”

12. “Get under the water!”

a. asks the pub landlord. b. cries a man in a blue sweater pointing towards Chertsey. c. cries one of the Martians in its tripod. d. explains the gunner to the narrator. e. explains the officer riding a horse on the road to Woking. f. says the narrator’s neighbor in Maybury Hill. g. shouts the narrator at the water’s edge. h. the milkman tells the narrator. i. the soldiers under the bridge tell the narrator. j. the narrator tells an old man in the village of Byfleet. k. the narrator tells his wife. l. the narrator’s wife asks him.

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6

Complete the diary of the narrator’s wife with the adjectives from the box. alive calm dead dear inhuman old probable sad safe stormy sure surprised terrible worried

dear After my husband, Herbert, brought me to Leatherhead, he returned to Maybury Hill. I felt

very

for myself, and I cried when he left. I for Herbert because it was

was also very

night with a lot of thunder and lightning in the a air. I waited for days with no news from my husband. His about this and said, “No cousins were really news is good news!” But I didn’t believe them. Then we heard some

news. A lot of people in Woking creatures from Mars. I

had been killed by the didn’t know if Herbert was

and well, or if he

and cold somewhere. When the was lying Martians began attacking Leatherhead, Herbert’s cousins to stay, so we left in a hurry. I

felt it wasn’t

home in Maybury Hill, wanted to return to my now empty of Martians. Herbert’s cousin, Jack, explained that my husband had that it wasn’t very stayed in our house and survived the war there. I replied that I felt

I would meet him again, and why

when Jack and I not at home? But I was very were standing in the garden, and Herbert walked through the glass doors out of the house.

7

What do you think is the message of the story? Check the correct boxes for you. Discuss.

1. Sometimes the smallest thing can destroy the greatest

enemy.

2. Humans are not really as strong or as important as they

think they are.

3. We are not ready to meet creatures from other planets.

4. Love is stronger than war.

5. If you fight for what you want, you will get it in the end.

6. Earth is a beautiful planet and we must protect it.

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GLOSSARY astronomer a scientist who studies planets and stars ax a big knife for cutting trees or meat cab a taxi: at the time of this story, pulled by a horse camp a place where someone lives for a short time canal a river made by people or other creatures cart a vehicle that is pulled by a horse cellar a room under a house crack a long thin hole crawl move on hands and knees creature a living animal cylinder a n object with rounds ends and long straight sides destroy damage something very badly drain a large pipe that carries waste water under the ground dust very small pieces of earth or sand explosion when something blows up suddenly and noisily firewood wood used to burn on a fire gasworks a place where gas is made or stored general a very important man in an army giant something very big handle move something into position

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inject put something directly into the body landlord a man who owns or manages a pub lightning a very bright light in the sky, caused by electricity lord an important man Martian a creature or an object from Mars meteorite a piece of rock from space which hits Earth missile something that is sent a long way through the air officer a person who gives orders in the army priest a person who works in a church pub a place in Britain where you can go for a drink ray a narrow line of light or heat refugee a person who has to leave their home and move somewhere else rod a long piece of wood or metal sword a long knife for fighting tentacle a long, thin, flexible part of the body thunder the noise of an electric storm tripod something with three legs war fighting between two groups of people

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StandFor Readers StandFor Readers provide a range of extensive reading materials for learners of all ages. The readers are carefully selected to cater for a range of interests, and are available across nine levels. Each title is meticulously graded for both vocabulary and structure, and topics have been selected to reflect the age and ability of students. StandFor Graded Readers are graded according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Factual titles respond to the need for Content and Language Integrated Learning materials.

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