Читать книгу The War of the Worlds / Война миров. Уровень 2 - Герберт Уэллс, Герберт Джордж Уэллс - Страница 7

How can the Martians slay men so swiftly and so silently? It is a mystery. Many people think that the Martians are able to generate an intense heat. They project this intense heat in a parallel beam against any object they choose. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. That night nearly forty people lay under the starlight about the pit. They were charred and distorted.

The news of the massacre reached Chobham, Woking, and Ottershaw. In Woking the shops closed. Many people were walking over the Horsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges.

Few people in Woking knew that the cylinder opened. People were talking excitedly and peering at the spinning mirror over the sand-pits.

By half past eight, there was a crowd of three hundred people or more at this place. There were three policemen too, they were trying, under instructions from Stent, to keep the people back and deter them from the cylinder.

As soon as the Martians emerged, Stent and Ogilvy telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks for help to protect these strange creatures from violence. After that they returned to the pit. Then we saw their death: three puffs of green smoke, the humming note, and the flashes of flame.

Only the heap of sand saved the other crowd of people. They saw the flashes and the invisible hand that lit the bushes. Then, with a whistling note, the beam swung over their heads. Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road. Then came a crying. There were shrieks and shouts.

Everyone was trying to clear the way to Woking again. Where the road is narrow, the crowd jammed. Three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled there. The crowd left them to die amid the terror and the darkness.