shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on

the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the

idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from

the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the

projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every

direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half

away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose

against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the

scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its

descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder,

caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured

incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached

the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most

meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however,

still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near

approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the

unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred

to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made

for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at

its unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some

evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully

still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge,

The War of the Worlds