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Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted , blue and crowded with houses ; westward the great city was dimmed ; and southward , beyond the Martians , the green waves of Regent’s Park , the Langham Hotel , the dome of the Albert Hall , the Imperial Institute , and the giant mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the sunrise , the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond . Far away and blue were the Surrey hills , and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods . The dome of St . Paul’s was dark against the sunrise , and injured , I saw for the first time , by a huge gaping cavity on its western side . And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches , silent and abandoned ; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts , the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef , and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all ; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back , and that men might still live in the streets , and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful , I felt a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears . The torment was over . Even that day the healing would begin . The survivors of the people scattered over the country — leaderless , lawless , foodless , like sheep without a shepherd — the thousands who had fled by sea , would begin to return ; the pulse of life , growing stronger and stronger , would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares . Whatever destruction was done , the hand of the destroyer was stayed . All the gaunt wrecks , the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill , would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels . At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God . In a year , thought I — in a year . . . . With overwhelming force came the thought of myself , of my wife , and the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever . IX . WRECKAGE . And now comes the strangest thing in my story . Yet , perhaps , it is not altogether strange . I remember , clearly and coldly and vividly , all that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill . And then I forget . Of the next three days I know nothing . I have learned since that , so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow , several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night . One man — the first — had gone to St . Martin’s - le - Grand , and , while I sheltered in the cabmen’s hut , had contrived to telegraph to Paris . Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world ; a thousand cities , chilled by ghastly apprehensions , suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations ; they knew of it in Dublin , Edinburgh , Manchester , Birmingham , at the time when I stood upon the verge of the pit .
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