THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
ized that the crest of Maybury Hill must be within range of the Martians' Heat-Ray now that the college was cleared out of the way.
At that I gripped my wife's arm, and without ceremony ran her out into the road. Then I fetched out the servant, telling her I would go up-stairs myself for the box she was clamoring for.
"We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common.
"But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror.
I thought, perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead.
"Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise.
She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of their houses astonished.
"How are we to get to Leatherhead?" she said.
Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge; three galloped through the open gates of the Oriental College; two others dismounted, and began running from house to house. The sun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood-red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything.
62
