ilway bridge I found a group of
soldiers--sappers, I think, men in small round caps, dirty red jackets
unbuttoned, and showing their blue shirts, dark trousers, and boots
coming to the calf. They told me no one was allowed over the canal,
and, looking along the road towards the bridge, I saw one of the
Cardigan men standing sentinel there. I talked with these soldiers
for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous
evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the
vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions. They
said that they did not know who had authorised the movements of the
troops; their idea was that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards.
The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common
soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible
fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they
began to argue among themselves.

"Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one.

"Get aht!" said another. "What's cover against this 'ere 'eat?
Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the
ground'll let us, and then drive a trench."

"Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha'
been born a rabbit Snippy."

"Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly--a little,
contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.

I repeated my description.

"Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers
of men--fighters of fish it is this time!"

"It ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first
speaker.

"Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said
the little dark man. "You carn tell what they might do."

"Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't no
time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once."

So they discussed it. After a while I left them, and went on to
the railway station to get as many morning papers as I could.

But I will not weary the reader with a description of that long
morning and of the longer afternoon. I did not succeed in getting a
glimpse of the common, for even Horsell and Chobham church towers were
in the hands of the military authorities. The soldiers I addressed
didn't know anything; the officers were mysterious as well as busy. I
found people in the town quite secure again in the presence of the
military, and I heard for the first time from Marshall, the
tobac