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III . ON HORSELL COMMON . I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay . I have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk , embedded in the ground . The turf and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sudden explosion . No doubt its impact had caused a flash of fire . Henderson and Ogilvy were not there . I think they perceived that nothing was to be done for the present , and had gone away to breakfast at Henderson’s 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 table like end of the cylinder , which was still as Ogilvy and Henderson had left it . I fancy the popular expectation 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 startled London with enormous headlines :
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