The first house we entered, after a little difficulty with the

window, was a small semi-detached villa, and I found nothing eatable

left in the place but some mouldy cheese. There was, however, water

to drink; and I took a hatchet, which promised to be useful in our

next house-breaking.

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake.

Here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the

pantry of this domicile we found a store of food--two loaves of bread

in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this

catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to

subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood

under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp

lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in

this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly

a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of

biscuits.

We sat in the adjacent kitchen in the dark--for we dared not strike

a light--and ate bread and ham, and drank beer out of the same bottle.

The curate, who was still timorous and restless, was now, oddly

enough, for pushing on, and I was urging him to keep up his strength

by eating when the thing happened that was to imprison us.

It can't be midnight yet," I said, and then came a blinding glare

of vivid green light. Everything in the kitchen leaped out, clearly

The War of the Worlds