Waterloo Bridge.

At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts

of that grotesque time--a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket

of the red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was

the placard of the first newspaper to resume publication--the Daily

Mail. I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket.

Most of it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing

had amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement

stereo on the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the

news organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned

nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the

Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other

things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time,

that the "Secret of Flying," was discovered. At Waterloo I found the

free trains that were taking people to their homes. The first rush

was already over. There were few people in the train, and I was in no

mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat

with folded arms, looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed

past the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over

temporary rails, and on either side of the railway the houses were

blackened ruins. To Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy

with powder of the Black Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms

and rain, and at Clapham Junction the line had been wrecked again;

there were hundreds of out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by

side with the customary navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty

252

The War of the Worlds