"Bringing you to safety, Jessie, is a measure that must assume precedence over all else. Do not concern yourself."
Ahead of them showed a bit of green meadow, with flowers fenced in beyond. He turned the cart from the road and upon the grass.
"We will stop for a time," he declared. "Poor Dapple has been going long and faithfully, and he should rest. So, when it comes to that, should I. And so, by making a scientific judgment, I think should you as well."
"Would it not be better to keep going along, George?"
"Not if we are to see our excellent little horse able to take us to the ocean."
Mrs. Challenger fell silent, as she had learned to do when her husband spoke with such determination. Challenger got heavily down and went to pat Dapple's cheek. He was answered by a soft whinny.
"It is good that you and I are on such friendly terms," Challenger said, unhitching Dapple from between the shafts. He took off the bridle and used a rein to tether Dapple to a wheel. At once Dapple began cropping lush June grass.
"We have not eaten since early this morning, Jessie," said Challenger. "Perhaps you will look out materials to give us a pleasant al fresco dinner. I shall go find water for Dapple."
He walked off toward the fence with the flowers. On the far side showed the roof and windows of a brown cottage. Mrs. Challenger lifted out the big basket, spread a blue-checked cloth on the ground, and set it with two plates and some sandwiches and fruit. She had finished drawing the cork on a bottle of Burgundy when Challenger came tramping back, a bucket of water in either hand, and, slung across his broad shoulder, a crumpled dark fabric.
"The house is deserted," he informed her. "Sensible people—they have fled before the report of danger. I found a pump, and here is water for us and for Dapple as well."
"And what else have you there?"
"Two blankets. I found them hanging on a clothesline. It may be a chilly night for this time of year, and we must camp here."
He gave the horse water and watched it drink gratefully. Then he came to sit cross-legged on the ground and eat with hearty appetite. Mrs. Challenger barely bit into her sandwich and swallowed a few grapes. Challenger coaxed her to drink a glass of wine with him.
"Here is a toast to our present situation," he said, lifting his own glass. "Confusion to these importunate visitors, and a safe journey to us."
She, too, sipped. "But so much of disaster has come already," she said, her voice hushed with gloomy foreboding. "I keep thinking of those scientists you say died so horribly—Mr. Stent, and Mr. Ogilvy. Surely you mourn them, too, the more because our earth could use their knowledge and advice today."
"As to their knowledge and advice, I can find nothing in those things to feel great deprivation in their loss," replied her husband gravely. "I regard the scientific attainments of both Stent and Ogilvy with an indifference that partakes of professional disdain. But you are right, dear Jessie, in reminding me that I should be sorry that they have died. It was a wretched death, let me assure you, and an entirely unnecessary one."
This condescension seemed to relieve Mrs. Challenger, who ate another sandwich of roast chicken and had a second glass of wine. They sat at ease and talked, while Dapple grazed near the cart. The sun set at last, and peace seemed to abide in the cloudless sky as it darkened.
"I am getting sleepy, George," said Mrs. Challenger at last, yawning behind her tiny hand. "That is strange, don't you think? Last night I slept barely at all."
"Which is the exact reason you feel like resting now. Let me arrange these blankets for you. Wait, before we spread them. I shall hollow you a bed."
Powerfully he scooped away soft lumps of turf, to make a depression that would fit her body. Then he tramped here and there, picking up dry wood under trees that fringed the grassy plot. He brought back a great armful and then another.
"This is enough for a small fire to take the chill off, and with careful supervision it will last out the night," he said in his lecturer's voice.
"But will you not lie down, too?"
"Later, my dear."
She crept among the folds of the blankets. He sat by the fire crooning a favorite song of his:
"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky . . .
Ring out the old, ring in the new."
His wife seemed to be comforted, as by a lullaby. At last he heard her breathing gently and regularly in slumber. But he sat awake in deep thought.
He wished he had brought the crystal, and ventured the hope that it would stay safe, with his house safe as well, while the invaders moved through on their way up from Surrey. If Holmes were here, there might be profitable discussion of the dire situation. He remembered what he had seen the last time in the crystal and clamped his teeth beneath his beard. Despite his repeatedly expressed contempt for humanity in general, the thought of a fellow man given to such a fate made his blood run cold.
Again he remembered Holmes's letter and the suggestion that man was but a lower animal in the harsh view of the invaders. Did Holmes suggest that the invaders, then, represented an advanced form of life developed by evolution from the human form? Did humanoid creatures exist, or had they existed, on other worlds of the universe?
As he asked himself these things, a night bird sang close by, its voice strangely sweet in a world so terribly threatened. What might the invaders think of birds? He took the bottle from the basket and drank another glass of wine, then rinsed the glass in the bucket and walked through the night to fetch more water from the well in the cottage yard.
It was nearly midnight, as his watch told him, when the sky suddenly glowed with a racing streak of green light, like the path of a flying meteor. Surely another cylinder, he knew as he watched it drop to the western horizon and wink out of sight. Very likely it was landing in Surrey, near the others. Quickly he counted in his head. Midnight of Monday—this would be the fifth arrival. Five more were hurtling earthward on their way. They would find their fellows triumphantly in possession of earth's largest, city.
At last he lay down on the blankets and slept.
He was awake at sunrise, brushing dew from his beard. He carried the buckets to the well beside the cottage. A cyclist in dusty clothes stopped in the front yard, and Challenger let him drink gratefully from the bucket.
"What is happening?" Challenger asked.
The cyclist dully told him about flight from London, of riding desperately all the afternoon and most of the night. The Martians had cloaked the Thames and its banks with their Black Smoke, killing crowds of helpless people who had not been able to get away. But no fighting-machines had seemed to come eastward out of town so far.
"Perhaps they'll be satisfied with London," croaked the cyclist, wiping his dirty face.
"No longer than time enough to establish themselves there," said Challenger authoritatively. "Afterwards, they will range further."
"And what will they do?"
"It will take some perception to divine their future tactics."
The man mounted his bicycle and pedaled away. Challenger carried the buckets to his own campsite and held one for Dapple to drink. Mrs. Challenger, too, was awake. She had tucked back her hair and folded the blankets. They dipped a cloth to wash their faces and hands, and made a breakfast of bread and fruit and tinned herring. She took a little copper pot from the basket to boil tea for them.
"And now?" she said. "It seems so peaceful here."
"It seemed more or less peaceful in Enmore Park, only last Thursday. Shall we go along?"
He reharnessed Dapple and they rolled off on the road.
"Such a good horse," said Mrs. Challenger.
"Dapple—A common name, and a fairly descriptive one," Challenger replied. "But thus far, he has shown some evidence of being an uncommon horse in an uncommon situation. He is strong, willing, and docile. Our relationship with him is uncommon, in more ways than one."
"Uncommon, George? How so, apart from the crisis, the emergency?"
&n
bsp; "A question well worth the asking, my dear," he lectured. "I have been giving some considerations to the problem of what these invaders think. And I agree with Holmes that to them mankind is a mere race of lower animals. They may well regard horses as a different species in a broad category of inferior creatures. But as to Dapple, should he be as extraordinary among horses as myself, or even Holmes, among men, then he will nobly serve our needs. I hope that he will bring us to the Channel coast before nightfall."
They found carriages and hurrying pedestrians on the road. One huge dray wagon came thundering from behind, making the little cart wheel far to the side to avoid being hit. Challenger's blue eyes shone dangerously, but he said nothing to the driver. They fared on their way for some hours. Occasionally, at crossroads, they caught glimpses of the main road to the north, jammed with traffic.
"How wonderfully wise you were, George, in deciding to take us along by these side ways," Mrs. Challenger said.
"The same thought occurred to me independently," he returned.
At noon they pulled into the dooryard of a deserted inn to eat a hasty lunch. Challenger went inside to look for possible fresh supplies, but found nothing other than two bottles of ale, which he fetched to the cart. They let Dapple rest for an hour, then drove along.
By midafternoon they found the traffic much thinner about them and approached a scatter of houses that Challenger took to be in the southern part of Chelmsford. From the yard of one of the houses a group of men came running out across the road as though to stop them, holding up their hands. Challenger reined in.
"What is it?" he growled. "What do you want?"
The men closed in around Dapple, four of them. Three were sturdy fellows, dressed in rough clothes like laborers. The fourth, a sinewy little man with top boots and a peaked cap, might have been a jockey or a groom. His sharp face grinned toothily.
"We're the Committee of Supply of the town of Chelmsford," he proclaimed. "We'll just be taking this horse, sir."
Challenger leaned his huge body forward above the reins. "Will you, indeed?" he asked dangerously. "And why do you presume to do that?"
"For provisions," said the little man, his hand on Dapple's bridle rein. "To eat. Since it's your horse, you can have a slice if you like."
"I have been told by Frenchmen that horseflesh is succulent and nutritious," said Challenger, setting himself to rise quickly. "I cannot speak to that of my own experience. But you must immediately disabuse yourself of any notion that we will give up this horse."
"Hold hard, whoever you are," spoke up the biggest of the others, moving close beside the wheel. "We mean business."
"Exactly," nodded Challenger, with something of baleful cheer in his manner. "Business. And I suggest you attend to your business elsewhere." With ungainly swiftness, he sprang down from the cart. "Be off with you!"
He gave the little man a shove that sent him staggering half a dozen paces away. The others, too, fell back into a knot, scowling. Challenger hunched his shoulders massively and bent his thick knees as though for a spring. His two hands spread themselves, their fingers like hooks.
"Don't talk to him; rush him!" bawled the little man who seemed to be the leader. "He's just one against us, for all his blathering!"
So saying, he drew a step or two apart. The other three advanced upon Challenger.
Challenger's teeth shone like fangs through his beard. Again he made a swift, heavy movement. Slipping past the three men as they charged at him, he clamped his big hands on their leader. The little fellow bawled in sudden terror as Challenger clutched him by shoulder and belt and whirled him bodily aloft, then threw him. The struggling body fairly sang through the air, struck two of the others and mowed them down like a scythe.
Challenger wheeled to face the man still on his feet.
"So that's it," growled the man, a broadly built tough with a stubble of roan whiskers on his jaw. Out of his pocket he dragged a huge clasp knife, which he opened with a snap.
Mrs. Challenger screamed as the man rushed. Challenger caught the knife wrist in his left hand and with his broad open right palm struck the stubbled face. The blow rang like a pistol shot, and the man went floundering down on the grass at the roadside. He lay as silent as though in sudden deep sleep. Challenger stooped and caught up the knife. He held it in his hand as he turned to face the others, just then struggling to their feet again.
But they only goggled at him, with wide, frightened eyes. Challenger confronted them, a terrible figure, squat, bearded, deadly. As though by a common impulse, they whirled from him and went dashing away among the houses. Challenger watched them go, then closed the knife and put it in his trousers pocket. He picked up his straw hat, which had fallen from his head in the scuffle, and put it on again. Heavily he climbed back to the seat of the cart and took up the reins. His wife gazed at him as though thunderstruck.
"Oh, how awful," she said under her breath.
"Awe is the precise emotion I intended to impart to them, my dear," he wheezed happily. "Gee up, Dapple."
As they trundled away again, he glanced back once. The man he had struck still lay motionless beside the road.
"When he revives again, perhaps he will be more circumspect, Jessie," said Challenger. "I seldom need to appeal to that particular talent of mine for physical combat. But when I was a boy at Largs, and later when I was at the University at Edinburgh, I was more or less preeminent at wrestling. I boxed once, too."
"Once?" she said, her voice still soft and timid.
"Yes, my dear, once. After that single bout, none of the other students were at all interested in trying me."
But his mood of self-congratulation faded when the front wheel on his side began to wobble and creak. He checked Dapple and got down to look.
"I should have foreseen," he said unhappily. "A person of my particularly impressive figure can put too much weight upon a light vehicle. Please change places with me, Jessie."
The cart ran better for a while with Challenger's bulk on the other side. But soon the damaged wheel began again to shake and scrape. Challenger drove at a walk to keep Dapple from striving too hard. By evening they drew into little Tillingham. The whole town seemed deserted, except for two or three figures that prowled at a distance, as though foraging for food in the empty houses. Challenger drove into the yard of a silent cottage.
"We shall stay here for the night," he decreed. "I fought once today for Dapple, but he has been fighting for many hours on our behalf and he is nearly exhausted. See, there's a barn, and, if I mistake not, hay in the manger. He can spend the night luxuriously, under shelter."
Mrs. Challenger stared timorously over her shoulder, but he patted her and actually chuckled in an effort at reassurance.
"Jessie, if the invaders are abroad, they are not many as yet. They will concentrate their attention on the main body of refugees, to the north of here on the main roads. Suppose they should come tonight; they will pass us by unless we officiously attract their attention."
Unhitching Dapple, Challenger led him into the stable and saw that he was provided with hay and water. Then he came and tried the front door of the cottage. It was locked, but a great heave of his shoulder broke it open. They walked into a modest, neat parlor with a leather couch and chairs. A tea service stood on a dresser. Through an inner door was a kitchen.
"Splendid, splendid," pronounced Challenger. He poked his bearded face into a cupboard. "The householders sensibly took away all food, but we have ample provisions for supper. Here is a spirit lamp, over which we can brew our tea. You are used to better quarters than these, Jessie, but I know that you will be more comfortable inside than in the open."
His wife busied herself in setting the kitchen table with bread, potted meat, tea, and some jam tarts, but she was still nervous. Challenger did his best to cheer her up, telling jokes and laughing loudly at them.
"I wish we could have lights tonight, but that might seem an invitation to any possible prowl
ing invaders," he said. "Come, I'll help make you a bed here in this little room, it has the aspect of a boudoir. I'll lie down on the couch on the parlor."
But first he went out to see that no hungry lurkers were disturbing Dapple. He examined the damaged wheel of the cart as best he could in the night, and shook his great head over it. Bringing in their luggage, he thought again of the crystal and wished he had not left it behind. Finally he loosened his neckband and removed his shoes and socks and lay down on the sofa. Its springs creaked under his great weight.
He wakened in the morning. His wife was making tea in the kitchen. Challenger put on his stout alpine boots and walked out to look again at the cart. It was plainly beyond any repair he could make. But he felt better when, entering the stable, he saw a saddle on a rail and a bridle hanging on the wall. These he strapped upon Dapple, who seemed to accept them well.
"You have been ridden as well as driven, it is plain," Challenger addressed the animal. "'Well, now you will carry someone I value most highly. See that you are worthy of the task."
Returning to the house, he ate breakfast with his wife. Then he gathered what food remained into a napkin. He led Mrs. Challenger out, helped her into the saddle, and handed her a grip to hold across the pommel. Then he took the reins and led Dapple away through the deserted streets of Tillingham.
No more than two miles beyond, they made their way around a high hill of rock-studded sand, at the top of which showed a small stone house among trees and brush. Just beyond, they came in sight of the shore.
It curved away north and south, with the bright waves lapping a sandy beach directly in front of them and mud flats showing far southward to the right. And the shore itself was thronged with a great dark crowd of people, and the water farther out was full of shipping. Challenger saw liners and cargo vessels well away in deeper water while, closer in, lay a multitude of smaller craft, like a great flock of all manner of sea birds at rest. Among these were tenders, launches, fishing smacks with sails furled at their masts, pleasure boats. At the shore itself hung open skiffs and dories, and the people were bunched at these, trying to scramble into them.
Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds Page 11
