The Sixth Occurrence

            Directly after what I have related to you in the last post had come to pass, I fell into a kind of mechanistic stupor.  I realized that I was dripping water all over the staircase, and this seemed to snap me out of my fog, my legs moving of their own accord into the dining room.  Once there, I drank some whiskey to calm myself, then, recognizing my sopping state, found cause to change my clothes.  Afterward, I was provoked to go upstairs to my study, though I did not, and still do not, know my reasoning behind this decision.  My window allows me to observe the railway and the woods, and through this, I saw an awful vision.  It appeared to me as if the whole country, and indeed the whole world, was on fire in that direction.  Flames were leaping briefly, then dying down, like fingers clutching an object.  As I gazed upon this scene, it came to my attention that this little town, which I had felt so secure in, had just been brought down by the coming of the Martians.  I glanced down, amazed and terrified all at once.  Just then, I caught sight of a soldier wandering around the garden, and called him up quietly with a short, “Hist!”.  He rushed into the house, and proceeded to tell me the horrific story of what had happened during those fateful hours I was away.  Apparently, he had only begun fighting about seven o’clock, when the firing had already started.  His horse tripped as he was riding into action, and as he went down, a gun blew up, and he found himself among dead horses and men.  He lay there, suffering from the pain of a back injury, and watched as the next events transpired.  Some more of the soldiers had tried to rush the Martians, and one climbed out of the pit in which it lay and simply burnt them all down with the Heat-Ray.  As the Martian turned and departed, the artilleryman ran for the village, and had been wandering since.  With that, he ended his tale, and we slept fitfully all night.  The next morning, I was inclined to return immediately to Leatherhead to find my wife, but the artilleryman persuaded me otherwise – for the third cylinder lay between my wife and us, and as he said, “It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife to make her a widow.”  As such, we planned to travel to Street Cobham together, from whence I would make a detour by way of Epsom, and eventually reach Leatherhead.  I would have begun our journey at once, but my companion thought it wiser to prepare instead of blindly striking out.  As we rode on, we encountered various persons in different states of array.  Finally, we stopped at Weybridge, and as we rested, the firing began.  Across the Thames, we heard guns booming, and presently observed a haze rising among the trees.  Shortly after, four of the armor-clad cylinders rose above the treetops and advanced towards Weybridge.  It struck me that the smartest thing to do was to get under water, so I shouted to those around me.  As we jumped, the Martians took no more notice of us then of pesky insects buzzing around, but instead focused on the batteries behind the trees.  One of the monsters was taken down by a shell, but where its Heat-Ray hit the water, it turned into steam, obscuring the Martians and turning all to chaos.  The Martians were shooting the Heat-Ray’s beam every which way, and the water was boiled into a frenzy, scalding those in it, including me.  I blundered toward the shore, and I have only vague recollections from there on.