About three o’clock
My imagination became belligerent , and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways ; something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back . It hardly seemed a fair fight to me at that time . They seemed very helpless in that pit of theirs . About three o'clock there began the thud of a gun at measured intervals from Chertsey or Addlestone . I learned that the smouldering pine wood into which the second cylinder had fallen was being shelled , in the hope of destroying that object before it opened . It was only about five , however , that a field gun reached Chobham for use against the first body of Martians . About six in the evening , as I sat at tea with my wife in the summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon us , I heard a muffled detonation from the common , and immediately after a gust of firing .