about a
quarter to nine
The newspaper articles had prepared men 's minds for the reception of the idea . By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the `` dead men from Mars . '' That was the form the story took . I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when I went out to get my _ Daily Chronicle _ . I was naturally startled , and lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits . I found a little crowd of perhaps twenty people surrounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay . I have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk , embedded in the ground .