relaying.

All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt

and unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue

of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along

the line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped

mass of red weed, in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled

cabbage. The Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons

of the red climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in

certain nursery grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the

sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing about it, and some

sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack,

flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were

everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut

with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went

with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the

foreground to the blue-green softness of the eastward hills.

The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing

repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to

Maybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the

hussars, and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in

the thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find,

among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the

whitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood

regarding these vestiges. . . .

253

The War of the Worlds