"Herbert George Wells. The War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора

house.

There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the
Pit, with their feet dangling, and amusing themselves--until
I stopped them--by throwing stones at the giant mass.
After I had spoken to them about it, they began playing at
"touch" in and out of the group of bystanders.

Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener
I employed sometimes, a girl carrying a baby, Gregg the
butcher and his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf
caddies who were accustomed to hang about the railway
station. There was very little talking. Few of the common
people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical
ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at
the big tablelike end of the cylinder, which was still as
Ogilvy and Henderson had left it. I fancy the popular ex-
pectation of a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at
this inanimate bulk. Some went away while I was there, and
other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I
heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly
ceased to rotate.

It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness
of this object was at all evident to me. At the first glance
it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage
or a tree blown across the road. Not so much so, indeed. It
looked like a rusty gas float. It required a certain amount of
scientific education to perceive that the grey scale of the
Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white metal
that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder
had an unfamiliar hue. "Extra-terrestrial" had no meaning for
most of the onlookers.

At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the
Thing had come from the planet Mars, but I judged it
improbable that it contained any living creature. I thought
the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite of Ogilvy, I
still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran
fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript,
on the difficulties in translation that might arise, whether
we should find coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it
was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an
impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing
seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to
my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work
upon my abstract investigations.

In the afternoon the appearance of the common had altered
very much. The early editions of the evening papers had