The War of the Worlds / Война миров. Уровень 2

By eight o’clock many boys and unemployed men already started to talk about the “dead men from Mars.” I went out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.

Chapter 3

The Cylinder

I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people. The cylinder lay in the huge hole. The turf and gravel about it were charred. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there.

There were four or five boys on the edge of the Pit. They were throwing stones at the giant mass until I stopped them.

When I got close to it, the strangeness of this object was evident to me.

It looked like a rusty gas float[7 - gas float – газовый резервуар]. But the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue.

The Thing came from the planet Mars. But I did not think it contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing was automatic. About eleven, as nothing happened, I walked back to my home in Maybury.

The evening papers startled London with enormous headlines:

“A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARS.

”

“REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING,”

and so forth. In addition, Ogilvy’s wire to the Astronomical Exchange[8 - wire to the Astronomical Exchange – телеграмма в Астрономическое общество] provoked curiosity.

There were half a dozen flys[9 - half a dozen flys – полдюжины пролёток] or more from the Woking station in the road by the sand-pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham, and a lordly carriage.

Besides that, there were many bicycles there. In addition, a large number of people walked, in spite of the heat of the day, from Woking and Chertsey, so that there was quite a considerable crowd.

It was very hot. Not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind. The only shadow was near pine-trees. A clever salesman in the Chobham Road sent up his son to sell green apples and ginger beer.

I went to the edge of the pit. There I found a group of about half a dozen men.

Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man were among them. It was Stent, the Astronomer. Stent was giving directions. He was standing on the cylinder. His face was crimson and streaming with perspiration. Something irritated him.

A large portion of the cylinder was uncovered, though its lower end was still stuck in earth. The workmen failed to unscrew the top. The case was enormously thick.

Ogilvy saw me and called to me to come down.