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They were sparing of the Heat - Ray that night , either because they had but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the opposition they had aroused . In the latter aim they certainly succeeded . Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements . After that no body of men would stand against them , so hopeless was the enterprise . Even the crews of the torpedo - boats and destroyers that had brought their quick - firers up the Thames refused to stop , mutinied , and went down again . The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls , and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic . One has to imagine , as well as one may , the fate of those batteries towards Esher , waiting so tensely in the twilight . Survivors there were none . One may picture the orderly expectation , the officers alert and watchful , the gunners ready , the ammunition piled to hand , the limber gunners with their horses and waggons , the groups of civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted , the evening stillness , the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from Weybridge ; then the dull resonance of the shots the Martians fired , and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields . One may picture , too , the sudden shifting of the attention , the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong , towering heavenward , turning the twilight to a palpable darkness , a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims , men and horses near it seen dimly , running , shrieking , falling headlong , shouts of dismay , the guns suddenly abandoned , men choking and writhing on the ground , and the swift broadening - out of the opaque cone of smoke . And then night and extinction — nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead . Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of Richmond , and the disintegrating organism of government was , with a last expiring effort , rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight . XVI . THE EXODUS FROM LONDON . So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning — the stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent , lashing in a foaming tumult round the railway stations , banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames , and hurrying by every available channel northward and eastward . By ten o’clock the police organisation , and by midday even the railway organisations , were losing coherency , losing shape and efficiency , guttering , softening , running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body . All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South - Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday , and trains were being filled . People were fighting savagely for standing - room in the carriages even at two o’clock . By three , people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street , a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station ; revolvers were fired , people stabbed , and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic , exhausted and infuriated , were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect .
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