Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea
no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I was concealed and
motionless, and under no urgency of action.
They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to
conceive. They were huge round bodies or, rather, heads about four feet
in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no
nostrils indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of
smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just
beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body I
scarcely know how to speak of it was the single tight tympanic surface,
since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost
useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen
slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight
each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that
distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the _hands_. Even as I saw
these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to
raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased
weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason
to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some
facility.
The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown,
was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure was the
brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.
Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the
heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by the denser
atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in
the convulsive movements of the outer skin.
And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a
human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the
bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were
heads merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less
digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures,
and _injected_ it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being
done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I
cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to
continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still
living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by
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