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

went flying south--clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone.
A dim group of people talked in the gate of one of the houses
in the pretty little row of gables that was called Oriental
Terrace. It was all so real and so familiar. And that behind
me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I told myself,
could not be.

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know
how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the
strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world
about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from some-
where inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out
of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very
strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my
dream.

But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity
and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There
was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric
lamps were all alight. I stopped at the group of people.

"What news from the common?" said I.

There were two men and a woman at the gate.

"Eh?" said one of the men, turning.

"What news from the common?" I said.

"'Ain't yer just BEEN there?" asked the men.

"People seem fair silly about the common," said the woman
over the gate. "What's it all abart?"

"Haven't you heard of the men from Mars?" said I; "the
creatures from Mars?"

"Quite enough," said the woman over the gate. "Thenks";
and all three of them laughed.

I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell
them what I had seen. They laughed again at my broken
sentences.

"You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on to my home.

I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went
into the dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so
soon as I could collect myself sufficiently I told her the things
I had seen. The dinner, which was a cold one, had already