dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the

Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly

past them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their

outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs.

Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in

the City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds

drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers

had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine

shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but

apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains

and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch

them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the

hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown

dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the

pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead.

The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the

stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the

stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction

that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis,

and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these

houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and

derelict. . . .

In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black

238

The War of the Worlds