The War of The Worlds by H. G. Wells chapter 3 and 4

CHAPTER III
ON HORSELL COMMON
I FOUND a little crowd of perhaps twenty people sur rounding the huge hole in which the cylinder lay. Henderson and Ogilvy were not there. I think they realized that nothing was to be done for the present and had gone away to breakfast at Hendersons house.
There were four or five boys sitting on the edge of the pit with their feet dangling and amusing themselves until I stopped themby throwing stones at the giant mass. There were a couple of cyclists a gardener I employed sometimes a girl carrying a baby Gregg the butcher and his little boy and two or three loafers who were accustomed to hang about the railway station. There was very little talking. Few of the common people in England had much knowledge of astronomy in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at the end of the cylinder which was still as Ogilvy and Hen derson had left it. I fancy the popular expectation of a heap of charred corpses was disappointed at this lifeless mass of metal. Some went away while I was there and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly ceased to rotate.

At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come from the planet Mars but I judged it improbable that it contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite of Ogilvy I still believed that there were men in Mars and I wondered if this cylinder was an attempt on their 
streaming with perspiration and something seemed to have irritated him. A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered
though its lower end was still embedded. As soon Ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd on the edge of the pit he called me to come down and asked me if would mind going over to see Lord Hilton who was the owner of the common and much surrounding ground.
The growing crowd Ogilvy said was becoming a serious obstacle to their excavations especially the boys. Stent wanted a fence put up round the pit and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring was occasionally audible within the cylinder but that the workmen had failed to unscrew the top as they could get no