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

tion and when I looked for him presently he was walking
towards Woking.

The sunset faded to twilight before anything further hap-
pened. The crowd far away on the left, towards Woking,
seemed to grow, and I heard now a faint murmur from it.
The little knot of people towards Chobham dispersed. There
was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.

It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage,
and I suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to
restore confidence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow,
intermittent movement upon the sand pits began, a move-
ment that seemed to gather force as the stillness of the eve-
ning about the cylinder remained unbroken. Vertical black
figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch,
and advance again, spreading out as they did so in a thin
irregular crescent that promised to enclose the pit in its
attenuated horns. I, too, on my side began to move towards
the pit.

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly
into the sand pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the
gride of wheels. I saw a lad trundling off the barrow of
apples. And then, within thirty yards of the pit, advancing
from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little black knot of
men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consulta-
tion, and since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their
repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to
show them, by approaching them with signals, that we too
were intelligent.

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to
the left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but
afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were
with others in this attempt at communication. This little
group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the
circumference of the now almost complete circle of people,
and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet
distances.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of
luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct
puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the
still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word
for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the