Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells Read Free Book Online Page B

a sudden unreasonable
impatience. He cursed the drifting globes roundly. "Get on!" he cried;
"get on! What do these things matter? How CAN they matter? Back to
the trail!" He fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its
mouth.
    He shouted aloud with rage. "I will follow that trail, I tell you!" he
cried. "Where is the trail?"
    He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the
grass. A long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer
dropped about his bridle-arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran
down the back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey
masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out
ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes, about—but noiselessly.
    He had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of
long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the
thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing
horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat
of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the
drifting balloon of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly
and drove clear and away.
    "Spiders!" cried the voice of the gaunt man. "The things are full of big
spiders! Look, my lord!"
    The man with the silver bridle still followed the mass that drove away.
    "Look, my lord!"
    The master found himself staring down at a red, smashed thing on the
ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle
unavailing legs. Then when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that
bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was
like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to grasp the situation.
    "Ride for it!" the little man was shouting. "Ride for it down the
valley."
    What happened then was like the confusion of a battle. The man with
the silver bridle saw the little man go past him slashing furiously at
imaginary cobwebs, saw him cannon into the horse of the gaunt man and
hurl it and its rider to earth. His own horse went a dozen paces before
he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and
then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man
standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that
streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down
on waste land on a windy day in July, the cobweb masses were coming on.
    The little man had dismounted, but he dared not release his horse. He
was endeavouring to lug the struggling brute back with the strength of
one arm, while with the other he slashed aimlessly, The tentacles of a
second grey mass had entangled themselves with the struggle, and this
second grey mass came to its moorings, and slowly sank.
    The master set his teeth, gripped his bridle, lowered his head, and
spurred his horse forward. The horse on the ground rolled over, there
were blood and moving shapes upon the flanks, and the gaunt man,
suddenly leaving it, ran forward towards his master, perhaps ten paces.
His legs were swathed and encumbered with grey; he made ineffectual
movements with his sword. Grey streamers waved from him; there was
a thin veil of grey across his face. With his left hand he beat at
something on his body, and suddenly he stumbled and fell. He struggled
to rise, and fell again, and suddenly, horribly, began to howl,
"Oh—ohoo, ohooh!"
    The master could see the great spiders upon him, and others upon the
ground.
    As he strove to force his horse nearer to this gesticulating, screaming
grey object that struggled up and down, there came a clatter of hoofs,
and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly
athwart the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. And again
a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept across the master's face.
All about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb
circled and drew nearer him....
    To the day of his death he never knew