The Fifth Occurrence

Oh, the horrors that have come to pass since my last post!  Since the beginning of that fateful day where the Martians fought back, I have had a kind of passion, the same kind one gets when they wish to start a brawl in a barroom.  My wife, on the other hand, had become unutterably monosyllabic.  If I had not promised to return the cart to the landlord that very night, I’m sure she would have kept me in Leatherhead until the Martian attack was over.  As it was, she could not seem to bear to watch me leave, and instead rushed inside after watching me climb into the cart.  I bid my cousins goodbye, and began the long journey to the Spotted Dog.  As I passed through Ockham, I saw a mass of black and red smoke, which I presumed to be an aftereffect of the fire.  As I gazed upon the scene, a green glow illuminated the sky.  When I turned my head to look, I realized it was the third Martian cylinder!  Startled by this falling object and the glow it brought with it, the horse bolted.  He took me on a rambling ride down Maybury Hill, and stopped only when we got to the bottom.  My attention soon became taken up by the sight of something moving down the hill, which I first mistook for the roof of a house, but shortly became known to me.  It was horrible!  Among the lightning and thunder and rain, a Thing rose from among the rooftops!  It was a lurid cylinder on three legs, moving along more swiftly than could ever be imagined, its clattering train blending with the crashes of thunder.  The horse galloped on, and soon we were almost face to face with a second Martian creation!  Without thinking, I wrenched the horse’s head so hard to the right that the dog-cart bowled over and the horse’s neck was broken.  I picked myself up from where I had been flung and hid behind a bush.  The first Martian ran to meet the second, and I used that distraction to make my way to a ditch, in which I crawled to Maybury.  As I wished to go on to my own house, I set off in that direction.  As I finally made my way out into the street coming from the College Arms, I stumbled upon something soft.  Enlisting the next flash of lightning, I stared down at a dead body.  As I turned it over, the face jumped out at me.  It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, the man whose cart I had come to return.  I rushed away to my house, and spent the night there, thinking of the Martians’ conveyances and of the dead landlord.