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I stepped over him gingerly and pushed on up the hill . I made my way by the police station and the College Arms towards my own house . Nothing was burning on the hillside , though from the common there still came a red glare and a rolling tumult of ruddy smoke beating up against the drenching hail . So far as I could see by the flashes , the houses about me were mostly uninjured . By the College Arms a dark heap lay in the road . Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet , but I had not the courage to shout or to go to them . I let myself in with my latchkey , closed , locked and bolted the door , staggered to the foot of the staircase , and sat down . My imagination was full of those striding metallic monsters , and of the dead body smashed against the fence . I crouched at the foot of the staircase with my back to the wall , shivering violently . XI . AT THE WINDOW . I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves . After a time I discovered that I was cold and wet , and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet . I got up almost mechanically , went into the dining room and drank some whisky , and then I was moved to change my clothes . After I had done that I went upstairs to my study , but why I did so I do not know . The window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common . In the hurry of our departure this window had been left open . The passage was dark , and , by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed , the side of the room seemed impenetrably dark . I stopped short in the doorway . The thunderstorm had passed . The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone , and very far away , lit by a vivid red glare , the common about the sand - pits was visible . Across the light huge black shapes , grotesque and strange , moved busily to and fro . It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire — a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame , swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm , and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above . Every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes . I could not see what they were doing , nor the clear form of them , nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon . Neither could I see the nearer fire , though the reflections of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study . A sharp , resinous tang of burning was in the air .
Назад Сторінка 30 з 121 Сторінка 30 з 121 Вперед Читайте далі з перекладом Створіть безкоштовний акаунт: 7 днів Pro, далі 20 перекладів слів на день або платний тариф.
