I sat with the curate (a low-ranking priest in the church) under a hedge. My brother was in London watching the people run away. At that same time, the Martians began to attack again. Most Martians stayed in the pit until nine o'clock at night. They were busy making a lot of green smoke.
But three Martians came out at eight o'clock. They moved slowly and carefully toward the towns of Ripley and Weybridge. The British soldiers were waiting for them. The Martians did not move in a group. They moved in a long line. They made loud noises like sirens to talk to each other.
The soldiers at Ripley were not ready for a battle. They were very scared. They fired their guns too early and did not hit anything. Then the soldiers ran away. The Martian was not hurt. It walked over the guns and destroyed more guns in a nearby park.
The soldiers at St. George’s Hill were better. They hid in a forest of pine trees. The Martian did not see them. The soldiers waited and then they fired their guns.
The shells hit the Martian. The giant machine shook and then it fell down. The soldiers shouted because they were happy. They tried to load their guns again quickly. The fallen Martian made a long, loud cry. Immediately, a second Martian came out of the trees to help.
The shells hit the ground but did not hit the second Martian. Then, both Martians used their Heat-Rays. The soldiers' ammunition (the bullets and shells for guns) exploded. The trees caught fire. Only a few soldiers escaped over the hill.
The three Martians stood still for thirty minutes. The Martian from the broken machine crawled out. He was a small brown creature. He looked like a small bug from a distance. He worked to fix his machine. At nine o'clock, he finished the work and got back inside.
Then, four more Martians joined the first three. Now there were seven Martians. Each Martian carried a thick black tube. They stood in a long, curved line near the river.
Suddenly, the soldiers fired rockets into the sky. This was a warning for the other soldiers. At the same time, four Martians crossed the river. The curate and I saw two of them. We were walking north on a dark road. The Martians looked very tall against the sky. They seemed to walk on a cloud of white mist.
The curate was very afraid and he began to run. I knew we could not run away from a Martian. I crawled into a deep ditch (a long, narrow hole in the ground for water). I hid among the wet plants. The curate saw me and he hid in the ditch too.
The two Martians stopped. One stood near the town of Sunbury. The other was far away. They did not make any noise now. They waited in total silence. It was a very quiet night with a small moon and bright stars.
But many soldiers were waiting for the Martians. They were behind hills and inside houses. They had many guns. They waited for the Martians to move. If the Martians moved closer, the soldiers were ready to fire all their guns at once.
I wondered if the Martians understood our world. Did they know we had a big army? Or did they think we were like angry bees in a hive? I had many questions in my mind while I watched the giant machine.
Then we heard a loud noise from far away. It sounded like a gun. The Martian near us raised his black tube. He fired it like a gun. There was a very loud bang and the ground shook. The other Martian answered with another loud bang.
I was very excited. I forgot about my painful hands and I looked over the hedge. I saw a big object fly through the blue sky. I expected to see fire or smoke, but I saw nothing. There was no explosion. It was quiet again.
"What happened?" the curate asked. He stood up next to me. I told him I did not know. A bat flew past us. We heard some people shouting far away. Then the Martian moved quickly along the river.
I expected the soldiers to fire their guns, but everything stayed quiet. The Martian moved away and disappeared into the night. We climbed higher to see better. I saw a dark shape in the distance. It looked like a new hill, but it was moving.
Then I saw another dark hill across the river. These "hills" were becoming lower and wider. I looked north and saw a third dark shape. Everything was very still. We heard the Martians hooting to each other, but the human guns did not answer.
Later, I learned the truth about those dark shapes. The Martians fired canisters (metal boxes) from their black tubes. The boxes hit the ground and broke open. They did not explode. Instead, a giant cloud of heavy, black gas came out.
This was the Black Smoke (a dark, poisonous gas). It was very thick and heavy. It moved across the ground like water. it went into the valleys and the ditches. If a person breathed this smoke, they died immediately.
The smoke was heavier than air. It stayed low on the ground. When the smoke touched water, a strange foam appeared on the surface. The gas did not move away with the wind easily. It stayed in big clouds for a long time. Finally, it turned into dust and fell to the ground.
The Black Smoke stayed near the ground. Because of this, people in high places were safe. If a person was on a high roof or in a church tower, they did not breathe the poison. One man stayed in a high church tower for two days. He looked down and saw the village covered in black gas. It looked like a black ocean.
Usually, the Martians cleared the smoke away when they were finished. They walked into the smoke and used a jet of steam. The steam made the black smoke disappear.
The curate and I went to an empty house. We watched from a window. We saw searchlights (very strong lights used by the army) on the hills. At eleven o'clock, we heard the big guns again. They fired for fifteen minutes. Then the lights went out and we saw a red glow in the sky.
Then a fourth cylinder fell from the sky. It looked like a bright green star. It landed in Bushey Park. The soldiers tried to fire their guns, but the Martians were too fast.
The Martians were very organized. They spread the Black Smoke everywhere toward London. They were like men killing wasps in a nest. The Martians did not give the soldiers a chance to fight. They used the smoke to kill the soldiers before the soldiers could see them.
By midnight, the whole Thames valley was full of black smoke. Two Martians walked through the gas and used their steam. They did not use the Heat-Ray very much that night. Maybe they wanted to keep their energy. Or maybe they only wanted to scare the people.
Sunday night was the end of the organized fight. After that night, no soldiers wanted to stand against the Martians. It was impossible to win. Even the sailors on the river refused to fight. They turned their boats around and went away.
I thought about the soldiers waiting in the dark. They were ready with their guns and horses. They had doctors and nurses ready for the wounded. Then, they heard the Martians fire the black tubes. The canisters hit the ground near them.
Suddenly, the black smoke began to grow. It was like a giant wall of darkness. The men and horses tried to run away. They screamed and fell to the ground. They could not breathe. Soon, the guns were empty and everyone was dead.
Before the sun rose, the Black Smoke reached the town of Richmond. The government told the people in London that they must leave. The great city was now in terrible danger.