The War of the Worlds
by H.G. Wells
The Narrator's Brother Timeline and Summary
- Saturday: Londoners read about the Martian landing in the papers. Telegraphic communication with Woking is interrupted.
- Sunday: The brother wants to get out to Woking to see the fighting, but can't. He wanders around London, and sees the army leave for the Woking area and the refugees coming in from there. The newspapers he finds are optimistic.
- Monday: He's woken up early by an alarm about the Black Smoke. He buys a newspaper that tells people to evacuate London, so he does the logical thing: he steals a bike and hightails it out of the city.
- Later on Monday: The brother rescues Mrs. Elphinstone and Miss Elphinstone from some robbers. Then Miss Elphinstone saves him by scaring off the robbers.
- Later that same day, the group finds a huge crowd of refugees in Barnet, and they have to make their way through the crowd. The brother tries to help someone who is trampled by the crowd, but he gets bitten instead of thanked.
- Tuesday: The brother's group continues moving east, toward the coast.
- Wednesday: Their pony is confiscated at Chelmsford, so they walk east and eventually reach the coast. (What were they going to do with that pony anyway? Give him a tour of Continental Europe?) They book passage to Ostend, Belgium, and travel to safety. At least, they do after cheering on the Thunder Child as it destroys two Martian tripods.