r to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent
revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a
certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring
exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was
filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined
dreamer of great things to his drink and gluttony, and to go on into
London. There, it seemed to me, I had the best chance of learning
what the Martians and my fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the
roof when the late moon rose.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DEAD LONDON

After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and
by the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was
tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its
fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that
presently removed it so swiftly.

At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I
found a man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust,
alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing
from him but curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should
have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face.

There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and
it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I got
food--sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable--in a baker's shop
here. Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of
powder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of
the burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the
streets were quiet again.

Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon
dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the
Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly
past them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their
outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs.

Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in
the City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds
drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers
had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine
shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but
apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains
and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch
the